



C FRIENDSHIP 

111 

ART 



Q^arnjan 




Coipight)I° 



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-Ft 



<u|tM7^ 



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Copyrighty igo4 
By L. C. Page & Company 

(incorporated) 
All rights reserved 



Published August, 1904 



COLONIAL PRESS 

Eledroiyped and Printed by C. H. SimondM &* Co. 

Boston, Mass., U.S.A. 



To '' Moonshine 



5j 



There is a delightful Oriental superstition, 
my dear " Moonshine," which declares that 
on the last day every artist will be called upon 
to endow each of his creations with a soul. 
I should be the last one to feel perfect confi- 
dence in denying the possibility of such a 
fancy, or in affirming that only living beings 
can have real personality. I prefer to be- 
lieve with the Greeks that every stream and 
tree has its own indwelling divinity, a spirit- 
ual as well as a material identity, bestowed 
upon it by the Creator to be the informing 
principle of its growth and beauty. Why, 
then, may we not think that the creative work 
of men's hands is imbued with a similar es- 
sence, — that every abode, like every shrine, 
is pervaded by its distinct and individual tute- 
lary presence? 



At the very writing of your name in the 
inditing of this dedication, you seem some- 
thing more than a mere house of wood in the 
green forest. I seem to myself to be address- 
ing a beloved friend, sure of a sympathetic 
hearing and an appreciative understanding of 
my fanciful enthusiasm such as are not always 
accorded us by our fellow mortals. How 
shall I account for this magical delusion? 

What loving heart first dreamed you, — 
what mastery made the dream come true? 
No mere fortuitous industry, I am sure, could 
have created your sightly structure of wood 
and nails, mortar and bricks and coloured 
stain. For beauty is never an accident, nor 
charm and loveliness the results of reckless 
chance. Every sill and rafter, every board 
and beam in your roof and walls, had brave 
life through long years of sun and rain, of 
winds and frost upon the mountainside, be- 
fore it was chosen by destiny for a place in 
your builded beauty. And now, as you stand 
in your serene silence, I doubt not, all the 

vi 



©0 ^^ Moonuftim ^^ 

strength of mounting sap and maturing sun 
that went into the growth of your fibre and 
grain persists and prevails to lend you fra- 
grance and endurance still. 

But whence came to you the supreme gift 
of personality? What benign power wrought 
you into such friendliness of shape and hue? 
What inspiration devised your restful tints 
and generous mould? By what conjury arose 
your serviceable spaciousness with its digni- 
fied repose; and how came you to be blessed 
with that rare additional quality which few 
habitations can boast, a quality akin to human 
temperament, an atmosphere and distinction 
all your own? Surely at the prompting of 
happy and unselfish impulses you must have 
been designed, a place of rest for the friend, 
and inspiration even for the stranger! And 
when at last your latch-string was hung out, 
and the fire of hospitality lighted upon your 
ample hearth, what alluring spirit of welcome 
radiated from your open door, impalpably 
as the moonshine for which you were named. 

vii 



/ 



8C0 *^ Moonuliint'' 

In gummer you are never closed, but the 
sweet air of the hills blows balmily through 
your quiet seclusion all day long, whispering 
its enchantments of peace; while at dusk, 
from your deep verandas, dreamful watchers 
behold the great frail rose-gold moon appear 
at the end of the Kaaterskill clove and pour 
its calm splendour along the purple moun- 
tains. 

In the long months of snow, when your 
windows are secured against the tempest, and 
your dwellers have migrated to their winter's 
work, what reveries must be yours ! You must 
see again in remembrance the faces that have 
thronged about your board and fire. In your 
rooftree must lurk reverberations of laughter, 
reechoes of song, and the lovely strains of 
imperishable music. The pine of your floor 
must be tempered and mellowed by the 
rhythm of many feet that have trodden it in 
masque and merrymaking, in festivity, and in 
the daily course of kindly life. Shall you 
not for ever recall one memorable twilight, 

viii 



8ro "^jwoonfiifiine"^ 

when an enraptured player at the piano, ren- 
dering and improvising as only a great artist 
can, filled you with golden harmonies, as if 
your solemn mountain walls and streams had 
at last found interpretation and voice, while 
his hearers sat enthralled under the wizard- 
ries of sound? Shall you not always remem- 
ber the suppers at the green table, when night 
was near its meridian, when the company 
lingered over their glasses, with toasts and 
tales and mirth and toasts again and more un- 
extinguishable mirth, until at last lanterns 
were lit, and in twos and threes the merry- 
makers took their way through the silent for- 
est to their lighted cabins among the hemlock 
shadows? Can you forget a famous cake- 
walk, when seventy couples assembled, mar- 
shalled by the very Muse of Comedy herself, 
garbed like a happy Hottentot, conducting, 
with unsurpassed spirit and gaiety through 
the ceremonious Rite of the Cake, a tatter- 
demalion gang of gaudy disguised revellers, 
hilariously competing for the coveted prize; 

ix 



and the judges, — a row of gray-haired dig- 
nitaries sitting aloft in Rembrandt relief be- 
hind gallery rail and candlelight, while the 
motley swirl danced to a finish before them! 
In contrast to this scene, you surely remem- 
ber certain afternoon gatherings of a sober 
sort, when luminous discussions were held of 
art or philosophy or other high theme, and 
were gaily prolonged over tea and cigarettes. 
You must ever fondly treasure the memory of 
many mornings filled with the sound of im- 
mortal poetry, — the frailties of Fra Lippo 
Lippi, the stirring Song of the Banjo, the 
lofty Masque of Taliesen, the terrible Ballad 
of Reading Gaol, or the moving tragedy of 
Sohrab and Rustum, read as poetry is rarely 
heard nowadays. As a crowning joy of rec- 
ollection, do you not often live over that 
evening when poetry was illustrated with 
tableaux vivants, — incomparable pictures of 
Keats's Meg Merrilies, fantastically tall and 
wise as she leaned upon her stick; of Brown- 
ing's Contemporary, keen of nose yet kind 



®o ^^Moonnftlm 



ff 



of eye, in peaked hat and wide ruff, with dog 
at heels; and of Malyn of the Mountains, 
a radiant young reality more lovely than the 
poet's fancy! 

In these solitary winter watches, too, I dare 
say you recherish your various comforts and 
treasures, and recall the friend associated with 
each of them, though some of your intimates 
have journeyed to the other side of the world, 
and some have gone beyond. There stands 
the chair of the Princely Friend, who chose 
it because it invited him to throw his leg 
over the arm as he smoked; this one is the 
gift of the most democratic of aristocrats, the 
Gentlest of Radicals. In that cushioned seat 
by the fire a dear Grandmother used to doze 
and dream, or, with unquenchable spirit in 
her sparkling eye, tell endless stories to the 
insatiable children in her lap. Here is the 
chamber reserved for a certain vagabond; 
that is the corner dedicated to another. On 
this convenient balcony overhanging the ra- 
vine the magician of all your luxuries, alert 

xi 



for fresh adventure, expects one day to alight 
from his private air-ship. From yon cosy 
nook behind the door, the Judge ever cheerily 
invites his friends to '^ live long and prosper." 
While from the playroom overhead a baby 
voice is heard passing sentence on an offend- 
ing tin soldier: "You stole three pigs and 
a hundred cannons, and you'll have to stay 
in prison all your life! " So your guest-rooms 
and galleries ever throng with happy pres- 
ences, once made welcome, never to be dis- 
possessed. 

O unforgettable " Moonshine," this book 
is like yourself, made of different elements, 
divers thoughts and moods and fancies. 
Many of its essays were written within your 
shade, and but for the leisure and inspiration 
you afforded could never have been written 
at all. I beg you, therefore, not for any merit 
of its own, to give it room upon the shelves 
in your poets' corner, that when other guests 
shall come, other hands open your door, other 
voices be heard exclaiming over the wonder 

xii 



Co '^ JW^oonfiitiinf 

of yeur prospect, it may bear slight but un- 
equivocal witness of one wayfarer's gratitude 
for all the solace and refreshment you have 
been so lavish to bestow. B. C. 



Xlll 



Contend 



'm^ 








PAGK 


The Burden of Joy . . . » • . . i 


The Tides of the Mind . 


• t 






7 


Of Contentment . . , 










14 


Of Vigour ... 










24 


The Training of Instinct . 










30 


Moving-Day .... 










34 


A Sea-Turn . , , , 










41 


Vanitas Vanitatum . 










48 


The Contemporary Spirit . 










54 


Horticulture 










. 60 


Speech- Culture and Literature , 










67 


On Being Coherent . 










. 81 


Giving and Taking . 










. 89 


The Secret of Art . 










. 98 


A Canon of Criticism 










. 107 


Realism in Letters . , , 










. 115 


The Note of Gladness 










122 


Sanity and Art 










. 130 


The Creative Spirit . 










. 138 


The Critical Spirit . 










. 146 


The Man Behind the Book 










, 161 



eontentis 



The Migratory Mood 

On Tradition . 

Personal Rhythm 

Ephemeral 

On Being Ineffectual 

The Outskirters 

The Artist's Joy 

Corpus versus Animus 

Simplicity 

The Magic of the Woods 

Of Civilization 

Business and Beauty 

The Paths of Peace . 

A Christmas Reverie 

Saint Valentine 

The March Hare's Madness 



169 
175 
183 
190 
194 
199 
205 
212 
218 
225 
231 
238 
247 
253 

290 



Ci)e JSuriren of Sog 



Joy is the only thing in the world more 
inevitable, more universal than sorrow. For 
whether it take the form of love or content- 
ment or delight in power, our capacity for 
happiness still outranks, our capacity for grief; 
and however sad life may seem to you and 
me at times, we cannot but observe the Ti- 
tanic gladness of creation. Even in our own 
small lives the gladness is more than the grief, 
the delight is more than the despair. Our 
very willingness to live attests this truth. In 
spite of failure and pain and sickness and 
bereavement and the obscure prosecution of 
an incomprehensible destiny, we are glad 
enough to stagger on. 

Is it not good, therefore, to recognize this 
I 



very palpable fact about existence? And 
should we not once for all give over our des- 
olate creed of disconsolate suffering, and 
affirm bravely that the soul of man does not 
realize itself through sorrow and renuncia- 
tion, but through happiness and achievement? 
Indeed, happiness is the test of all success, 
the measure of our growth, the boundary of 
our accomplishment. To be healthy is to be 
happy; to love anything is to be happy; to 
find out the truth is to be happy. These are 
the three ways in which gladness comes to 
us; and unless we can attain some measure 
of such joyousness in body, spirit, and mind, 
we may be very sure that we are not getting 
the best out of life. Without his due share of 
each of these three kinds of gladness, no man 
can be greatly happy; and without something 
of at least one of them, no man can be happy 
at all. 

It IS only reasonable to recognize this 
prime necessity of health, or the normal phys- 
ical condition, as the basis of happiness — at 

2 



STJie Mnv'Hm of 3os 

least of one-third of happiness. To be com- 
fortably housed, to be sufficiently and hygi- 
enically clothed, to be well fed, to be properly 
exercised, to be, in short, at the top of one's 
bodily capacity — no man should be content 
with less than this. Yet how slovenly we are 
in such matters! Our houses are often a mere 
storeroom of treasures, or a clutter of uncom- 
fortable furniture and hideous bric-a-brac; 
our clothing, for half of us at least, is an 
exasperating menace, hampering the graceful 
motions of the body, cultivating disease, and 
irritating the temper beyond endurance; our 
food, when it is not too rich, is usually ill 
assorted and worse cooked; our habits of 
work, or exercise, and care of the body, are 
seldom other than dire necessity arranges for 
us. Our constant dependence on drugs and 
physicians is, more than nine-tenths of it, the 
result of gross ignorance of natural laws; and 
the other tenth is most likely the result of 
carelessness. Why not make a pleasure of 
physical existence, by bringing to its regula- 

3 



tion a little common sense, a little fore- 
thought, a little care, a little knowledge of 
the simplest laws of health? That were surely 
better than to die of lethargy and indiges- 
tion. And yet how unusual it is to see a 
human being in perfect health and alive to 
all the innocent wholesome pleasures of our 
mere animal existence! How commonly one 
sees the miserable, stuffy, neglected, and ail- 
ing body, with no more instinct for physical 
enjoyment than the unfortunate lap-dog 
which shares the stupidity of its owner. 

If there were no need for social reform 
other than this, that there might be less grind- 
ing toil for some and more wholesome en- 
forced exertion for others, it would still be 
supremely necessary for the preservation of 
the race. We make very lavish boasts of our 
civilization, our enlightenment, our progress, 
and yet the multitude of intelligent persons 
who shudder at the mention of fresh air and 
cold water is unbelievable; while they still 



JTi^e ©ttttren of 3J^» 

continue to stufSf themselves with violent med- 
icines and unwholesome food. 

This is only the most obvious and primitive 
sort of happiness, such as savages enjoy. It 
is something to which we are all justly en- 
titled, but which we have too foolishly aban- 
doned. And unless we are wise enough to 
return to these simple and natural pleasures 
of physical being, we shall not only regret it 
as individuals, but as a race and nation. We 
ought to have too much pride to be sickly and 
weak. We ought to perceive that beauty is 
based upon health, — ^^ indeed, that beauty is 
only the outward seeming and appearance of 
normal health. This is not a visionist's the- 
ory. It is a very sober scrap of the truth. 
It does not apply to mankind at large; it 
applies to you, whoever you are, who read 
these paragraphs. If you are a man and 
think yourself tolerably well conditioned, the 
chances are that you would be still happier 
physically if your collar were not so high, 
or your shoes not so tight, or if your hours 

5 



out-of-doors were longer. While if you are 
a woman, it is certain that you never take a 
single full breath during your waking hours ; 
and that if you were asked to walk half a mile 
on a country road, you would be compelled 
to hobble over the ground like a ridiculous 
Oriental. 

All this, of course, is only the beginning 
of joy, yet it is indispensable. We must carry 
an elated chest, that there may be room for 
a happy heart within. A careful regimen for 
the body will not secure happiness of the 
spirit, but it will make us ready for the first 
approach of joy. If we would entertain 
angels, the least we can do is to be always 
prepared for them. 



Stjje €toe$ of tlje Mints 



Always through the ocean the ranging 
tides are sweeping with flux and counterflux, 
like enormous arteries throbbing under the 
bright vesture of the sea. There are the di- 
urnal tides that flow and ebb and pause and 
flow again continually, hung in space by the 
mystery of gravitation; with the thrust of 
the sun and the pull of the great ponderous 
moon, they swing around the earth. But to 
us creepers by the shore they seem only 
streaming currents of blue or red or greenish 
water. Then there are the greater tides — 
properly speaking, ocean currents — which 
have their bounds and frontiers, their appor- 
tioned cycles to journey, shores to scour, 
islands to build, reefs to thread, and the un- 

7 



8f8^ ffvitntfuiiip of ^tt 

known depths of unplumbed immensity to 
traverse. 

To speak by a metaphor, there are tides of 
the mind also. Each man's mind, perhaps, 
is something like an insignificant rock-pool 
on our granite coast. It may be sleeping idly 
in the sun, and you would take it to be a mere 
chance rain puddle, or at best the oversplash 
of storm, soon to become stagnant, to evap- 
orate, to pass away. But you mistake; it has 
somewhere out of sight a hidden passage of 
communication with the great deep, eternally 
breathing down the shore. 

On parts of the coast where the soil per- 
mits it, as in the Bahamas, for instance, with 
their coral rock foundation, there are wells of 
sweet water within a few feet of the sea, that 
rise and fall regularly with the tide, yet are 
always fresh and wholesome to drink; so ad- 
mirable is the filtering alchemy of the earth. 
There are minds of this sort, the thinkers of 
the race, able to keep always in close touch 
with the vast profound of truth, and able at 

8 



SJie mnm of tfie mitt's 

the same time to transmute it in some way into 
their own limpid expression for the kindly 
service of man. Such a man, whether he be 
poet or preacher, artist or agitator, is more 
than merely '^ a well of English undefiled; " 
he is a well of spiritual refreshment. Shake- 
speare, Marcus Aurelius, Goethe, Darwin, 
Plato, Whitman, Browning, Job, Virgil, 
Hugo, Kant, Spinoza, St. Francis — pagan, 
saint, or skeptic, it matters not at all — these 
were wells of the undefiled truth. They 
might be the fountain springs of that stream 
Emerson speaks of in his poem " Two Riv- 



ers." 



" So forth and brighter fares my stream, — 
Who drink it shall not thirst again j 
No darkness stains its equal gleam, 
And ages drop in it like rain." 

Yes, and how we prize a good well ! Think 
how many generations have drunk from that 
clear fountain which Chaucer gave to Eng- 
land! A new spring is discovered, and we try 
its taste, — first two or three put it to their 

9 



lips, then twenty, then a hundred, then per- 
haps a hundred thousand, its fame is so ex- 
cellent. Then, if it is really good water, and 
unfailing for human need, we and our chil- 
dren may drink of it for centuries. 

We read books for the same reason that we 
drink of a well, I fancy. The natural element 
is necessary for the body; and we bring our- 
selves daily into contact with the vast primal 
chemic forces of the universe, else we should 
perish. So, too, the mind has its necessity 
of nourishment; it must be brought daily into 
immediate relation with the outer vast of 
spiritual truth from which it springs. It may 
drink from books, or it may find the sea of 
actual life sufficient for it. But water it must 
have, sweet or salt. 

Now there is nothing mysterious, or elect, 
or exclusive in art, or books, or poetry. Our 
only use of these things, our only joy in them, 
is this: that they put our small selves into 
relation with the great tides of truth. How 
a draught from Carlyle will sluice the dust 

lO 



Zftt mntn of m Minn 

out of one's brain! For the mind of every 
man would perish in a day if it had no chan- 
nel leading out to the source of thought! It 
is not a question of right reason, or even of 
reason at all; it is a question of life, of com- 
mon joy and sorrow, and love and pleasure in 
beauty. 

It has been said that happiness is not gov- 
erned by circumstance, that it depends on the 
tides of the mind. Have you not noticed how 
capricious our own capacity for happiness 
seems? To-day every condition may make 
for pleasure, — a morning unsurpassed for 
loveliness, an easy conscience, indulgent 
friends, a well-earned respite from routine, 
wealth, plenty, amusement, — and yet the 
magic moment of radiant joy fails to arrive. 
The tide is setting the wrong way. To-mor- 
row, on the contrary, everything is adverse; 
it is a mean, drizzly, unhealthy day in town, 
business is vexing, men are untrustworthy, one 
failure follows another, our home-folk berate 
us, our clothes are shabby, the cars are 

II 



8Ciftr iFtteirtrsfitii of art 

crowded to indecency; it matters not the least 
in the world. From some undiscovered 
source, there suffuses us a sense of joyful 
content, an unfathomable draught of happi- 
ness which nothing can poison or take away. 
Probably, unknown to ourselves, we have 
done some act or met some thought, which 
put us in communication with absolute truth. 
One cannot tell. It was a touch of the tides 
of the mind. 

But this is certain: never, by taking thought 
for the outward conditions alone, can one 
secure happiness, nor control these uncharted 
mental tides. I dare say, however, that we 
might be helped in governing the ebb and 
flow of happiness by two rules. The first is 
this: See that your body is well cared for. 
The body is the reservoir through which the 
tides of the mind will flow. You must keep 
it clean and well ventilated, and thoroughly 
repaired. To do this needs leisure and work 
combined. And the second rule is very like 
the first: See that every other body is well 

12 



cue mrttu of m Minn 

cared for. This will give you a sufficient 
spiritual exercise to ensure a wholesome thirst 
for happiness; and your soul will then refuse 
to be put off with any of the numerous de- 
coctions of mere pleasure. 



13 



®f Contentment 



One may say of contentment, as of happi- 
ness, that it is rather an attitude of mind than 
a state of being, and depends more on the out- 
look we assume toward life than on the actual 
return we receive from it. If you look for 
contentment in those about you, you perceive 
it is not a matter of fortune nearly so much 
as of temperament, and those who are discon- 
tented in the midst of abundance are as many 
as those who are happy in their poverty. 

The discontent of the poor is explicable 
enough, and the happiness of the prosperous; 
but how shall we account for the serenity of 
the first and peevishness of the second, when 
we observe it? Hardly otherwise than by at- 
tributing their happiness and their misery to 

14 



&f Contentment 

causes which arise in the inner self, and by 
forgetting in every case the worldly condition 
of the individual. You may see any day in 
the park sour old age rolling by in a Victoria 
behind a jovial flunkey, and equally sour 
youth dashing madly down the bridle-path, 
luxurious and discontented in the hot pursuit 
of distraction. In the next instant appear two 
others of like age, sex, means and circum- 
stance, yet each is the picture of content, so 
that every beholder smiles and is made happy 
at the mere sight of their happiness. So it is 
in every zone of the community; you can 
never tell from any story of a man whether 
he is happy or not. You must wait until you 
see him. The eye will discover him, for his 
own eye will betray him. If he be bankrupt 
in the business of life, you may know it im- 
mediately, though he were studded with sap- 
phires and rode in a hansom of gold. But 
if he have an ample balance in the Bank of 
Joy, you may know that, too, no matter how 
sorry a figure he may cut in a tailor's estimate. 

15 



It is not being out at heels that makes a man 
discontented; it is being out at heart. 

To be contented is to be good friends with 
yourself. He who has no quarrel with him- 
self will have no quarrel with the world; 
while he who is at enmity with himself will 
hardly have a friend on earth. We must be 
reconciled to ourselves if we would have the 
enduring affection of others. For as long as 
we dislike ourselves, we are put in a temper 
of carping and cynical uneasiness far from 
lovable; we breed an unamiable disposition, 
and afifect others as we affect ourselves — as 
ill-natured, querulous persons. The moment 
we are contented — the moment we bring the 
distracted elements of our nature into some- 
thing like order — that moment we begin to 
taste the happiness of peace. Having no 
hatred, nor disgust, nor annoyance toward self 
left, we can have none left toward others. We 
appear what we are, normal beings, full of the 
natural blessedness of life; and friends start 
up for us from every roadside. A man is his 

i6 



m eonUntmtnt 

own worst enemy, but not his own best friend; 
for when he is at odds with himself, every 
man's hand is hard against him; but when he 
has made peace with himself, he has the whole 
world of friends to choose from. 

"Ah, yes, but the question is," you say, 
"how shall a man be friends with himself? 
How shall he keep on good terms with his 
conscience, and be reconciled to his own sane 
reason? " 

The question, I believe, gives a hint of the 
best possible answer. It implies a certain 
divergence of purpose between the different 
members of our nature — an occasional, in- 
deed a frequent, difference of opinion between 
rational judgment and instinctive desire, or 
between imperious aspiration whose authority 
is not to be denied and compulsory appetite 
whose dictates are not to be gainsaid. I shall 
only be reconciled with myself when these 
associate powers, inherent in my being and 
constantly asserting themselves, are brought 
into order and poise. So long as either one 

17 



of the three is allowed to wholly dominate 
the other two, just so long shall I suffer in- 
ward strife. 

If I live for senses alone, I shall taste the 
discontent of soul and mind; I shall know 
neither repose of spirit nor serenity of reason. 
I may soak myself in the luxury and beauty 
of all that wealth can afford, but the magic 
moment of happiness will still be as far off 
as ever. 

If I live for reason alone, devoting my life 
to science or philosophy or theoretical prop- 
aganda, neglecting all the good things of the 
world as it is, and denying myself all emo- 
tional enjoyment — all enthusiasm and gen- 
erous appreciation — I shall still fail of hap- 
piness; I shall still be worrying the bone of 
discontent, for my nature will be ill-poised 
and abnormal, at war with itself as of old. 

And, again, if I live for my moral nature 
alone, a life of self-denial and asceticism and 
meditation and prayer, however lofty my 
ideal, I may still fail to find contentment, for 

i8 



©f iS^onttntmtnt 

I may have starved my love of beauty and 
strangled my love of truth. 

No human creature can thrive and come 
near perfection without giving equal heed to 
the curiosity for truth, the instinct for beauty, 
and the impulse for doing right. And it is 
only as these three great instinctive forces 
come into something like fair accord that we 
begin to know contentment. Contentment is 
the index of poise in a character, while dis- 
content is an indication — nay, is the very 
essence — of distraction. To be distraught, to 
do one thing when we perceive we ought to 
do another, to see the truth clearly and not 
have heroism enough to follow it, to lead an 
inner life of turmoil — this is the beginning 
of death, the gradual dissolution of character 
we nearly all undergo. It may be habit or 
conscience or subservience to conventionality 
that enslaves us and undoes us at the last; it 
may be a faltering will and a fickle heart; it 
may be a dull and sleepy mind. The disaster 
is the same; we feel the diversity of purposes 

19 



8Cft^ iFttenJrsiftflJ of art 

of the warring intuitions within us, and the 
goblin of discontent crouches on our door-step. 

But let me for one instant grow aware of 
the loveliness of poise in character, the sure 
serenity and happiness that come with any- 
thing like harmonious culture, and at once I 
am transformed. I perceive what content- 
ment means, and how it has not a thing to do 
with possessions or conditions or so-called suc- 
cess, but abides in the individual, only await- 
ing development. Contentment is the peace 
of still currents which have joined and min- 
gled in one superb sweep of force ; discontent 
is the thresh of opposing tides. Having 
known whence contentment comes, I know 
well how best to secure it, and all my days 
must thenceforth be given to the threefold 
culture which alone can lead us in the perilous 
way toward perfection. 

But this word culture, or self-culture, does 
not imply selfishness. We shall find that in 
the spiritual life, where the will is manifest 
and all activities take their rise, one of the 

20 



a^t €onttntmmt 

greatest sources of happiness is in serving 
others. We shall find no contentment if we 
do not know that. And to serve others as 
well as to serve ourselves, practical resources 
are needed — the good common necessities of 
life and good uncommon luxuries, too. If 
we would know how much luxury to allow, 
I dare say we shall find the answer to that 
question also in our threefold ideal of culture. 
We shall not limit a man's wealth by what 
he can earn or make, but by what he can use. 
Many a man goes on multiplying his wealth 
just because he has not the capacity to make 
use of what he already has. What he really 
hungers for is some vent for his mental or 
emotional and aesthetic nature which he has 
been starving all his life in the pursuit of gain. 
He does not know this; he only knows he is 
discontented with what he has got, and thinks 
there is nothing that will satisfy him but to 
get more; whereas the truth is he has too 
much already. His character is debauched in 
its active and practical and executive side. 

21 



2fft^ :ffvitnXinlii» of att 

Then if he turns to find contentment in pleas- 
ure, he only finds distraction and dissipation; 
he is still living wholly in the region of phys- 
ical activity, w^hereas he really needs to live 
in the region of the intelligence and the spirit. 
He needs to know more, and to love more, 
and to appreciate more; not to do more. He 
has done too much already. 

Just the same criticism applies to the exclu- 
sive bookworm who is debauched in his men- 
tal nature and has more knowledge than he 
can possibly use. He, too, is discontented 
and thinks nothing will satisfy him but more 
and more learning; whereas it is not learning 
but life that he needs — the satisfaction of 
accomplishment. Of the artist, too, you may 
say the like. His whole nature is probably 
given over to appreciating the world about 
him, to receiving impressions and recording 
them, to developing and cultivating his moral 
nature, while very often his mind is untrained 
and ill-informed. His culture has been sadly 
ill-balanced and an enormous ennui takes hold 

22 



©f Contentment 

of him — he does not know why. Perceiving 
only discontent within himself, he fancies that 
contentment is to be found farther on in the 
road he has been following, and he grows more 
and more emotional, more and more absorbed 
in the aesthetic appreciation of life, and less 
and less capable of thought or action and, of 
course, less and less contented every day. To 
the artist, the scientist, the man of action, the 
danger lies in specialization: the man has be- 
come absorbed in his trade; he is no longer 
a man, but a tradesman, whether his trade 
be commerce or art or philosophy. He can 
never be happy until he tries to be a man first 
of all, and wears his profession as lightly as 
he would wear a flower in his buttonhole. 



23 



®f Vigour 



You may say at once that the necessity of 
vigour is self-evident. But one must dis- 
tinguish between vigour, the cultivable vir- 
tue, and vitality, the essence of life. The 
former we may acquire, the latter is the gift 
of the gods. We may display vitality with 
little vigour; and with a spark of that indis- 
pensable fire we may kindle a conflagration 
of energy. 

In the realm of art and expression this or 
that achievement may have essential vitality 
and still be lacking in vigour. And yet it is 
vigour that gives art its power and makes it 
prevail. You may see a painting or a piece 
of modelling, accurate, poised, beautiful, deli- 
cate, and quite flawless in execution; so that 
at first you are inclined to pronounce it a bit 

24 



®f IfiQonv 

of perfect art; until after a time it grows 
tame; you begin to tire of it; the charm of 
mere loveliness of line or tone has not been 
enough to hold your admiration. The thing 
has lacked vigour; it has not that electric 
power of impressing itself upon one, so need- 
ful to make perfection more perfect still. 
For perfection is not merely the cutting away 
of im^perfections, but the energizing and vital- 
izing of the chosen form. It is not enough in 
art to secure perfect form, a perfect colour, 
a perfect tone; it is necessary also (it is even 
more necessary) to make them live. It is not 
enough to create shapes of beauty; we must 
give them vigour as well, so that they may 
survive and prevail against what is indiffer- 
ent and unlovely and inimical to joy. Passive 
beauty is well, but active beauty is best. 

Then, too, lack of vigour will mean lack of 
growth. The artist who has no exuberance, 
no superabundance of vigour to impart to his 
creations, will not have enough to ensure his 
own development. What he is he will re- 

25 



STJie iFr(entrfiif|(ii of art 

main. You need look for no wonder-working 
from him in future years. All his skilled 
hand was able to do it has done. The limited 
energy at his command has accomplished his 
utmost in its faultless, but unliving, creations; 
and no superfluous vitality remains to be 
transmuted into new vitality of the art or to 
expend itself in new enterprises of culture. 

With vigour we may hope for anything, 
without it there is no future. It was vigour, 
the profusion of energy, the redundance of 
vitality, that created and sustains the earth; 
and nothing short of this will create it anew 
in forms of beauty under the hand of the 
artist, or lend to these forms the endurance 
needed to confront the wear of time. 

How necessary, then, for the artist to have 
vigour at all costs — vigour of the whole per- 
sonality, body, mind, and spirit! And cer- 
tainly quite as necessary for all of us laymen 
as well. And it will not suffice us to have 
mental vigour alone, or physical vigour alone, 
or moral vigour alone; we must have a bal- 

26 



©f TtflOttt 

ance of these. For otherwise we should make 
no real progress; we should begin to revolve 
upon ourselves, and be deflected from our true 
course. But a complete and poised personal 
vigour, strong, intelligent, and happy — who 
shall say how far it may not go, or set limits 
to its achievements? 

We recognize this need of a balance of 
vigour in our academic training, where ath- 
letics are encouraged, to counteract the bad 
physical effects of overmentalization. And 
college sports have corne to be almost as im- 
portant as college studies. There is one im- 
portant difference, however. College studies 
are a training of the mind; college sports are 
not an educational training of the body. They 
serve to develop muscle to some extent; but 
they do so in a very primitive and ineffectual 
way. They are not followed to give vigour to 
the personality through the body, as they 
should be followed; but to dissipate its en- 
ergy. They are not an education, but a diver- 
sion, an amusement. If colleges made it their 

27 



8C?ie :ffvltnXfu'^i» of Sltt 

object to see which men could read the great- 
est number of books in a given time, or mem- 
orize the greatest number of facts, that would 
be a scheme of mental training parallelled to 
the physical training we now have. And yet 
with a very little wise direction of physical 
culture in ,our schools and colleges an enor- 
mous result could be obtained in added vig- 
our. We have, of course, a few teachers who 
perceive this need, but as yet their influence 
has made too little headway against the tide 
of popular misapprehension on this point. It 
is not generally perceived that the usual phys- 
ical development of the modern athlete is 
onesided and unlovely; that his muscle is not 
only cultivated at the expense of his charac- 
ter (or rather, I should say, to the neglect of 
his mind and spirit), but that even his phy- 
sique has not the grace and ease and beauty 
which should inherently belong to it. The 
modern college man ought surely to rival the 
ancient Greek for beauty, for vigour of mind 
and spirit as well as of body. Instead of that, 

28 



(©f Viflottt 

the average college man who has given much 
time to athletics is sadly lacking in graceful- 
ness and poise. Our idea of the college ath- 
lete is perilously like the figure of a well- 
groomed young ruffian. 

Now ruffianism is no essential part of a 
good physical training. It exists in our stand- 
ard of physical excellence, because our men 
are badly taught — or rather because they are 
not taught at all. Athletics are cultivated (as 
it is called), but proper motion, proper use 
and control of the body, with due regard to a 
directing mind and an indwelling spirit, are 
almost nowhere inculcated. The result is 
strength, rather than vigour — ruffianism, 
rather than refinement. 

Yet physical training may be made one of 
the most powerful agents for the highest cul- 
ture of character. 



29 



®i)e ffl^mlnittfl of 3n0tintt 



Certainly we do not give our instinct any- 
thing like a fair chance in this modern life. 
We have arranged our moral obligations and 
our spiritual duties by codes more or less 
severe; we have hedged about our material 
life with such complete safety and so many 
conventions that there remains comparatively 
little scope for the individual will to exercise 
its initiative choice. Our path of conduct is 
so closely prescribed that range of choice is 
limited, and instinct atrophies. This is wrong, 
surely. It must be culpable to allow any 
power, so delicate, so strong, so beneficent 
and trustworthy as the human instinct, to 
deteriorate and grow inoperative from any 
cause whatever, 

30 



ffiiie Zvainina of Mmntt 

Yet every day we neglect to consult our 
instinct. How many of us, when we sit down 
at table, think instinctively what we should 
prefer to eat? For the most part we consume 
what is set before us, without question — 
pickles, candies, raw fruits, and fried abom- 
inations without number — regardless of util- 
ity or consequence. Then, as a reward of our 
own stupidity, we must send for a doctor just 
so often to undo the effects of our folly. Even 
those of us who have sense enough to con- 
sider their food at all are for the most part 
content to regulate their diet according to 
some hygienic formula, more or less admira- 
ble, no doubt, but certainly universally appli- 
cable. Yet all the while here is instinct only 
waiting to be consulted to give us pretty sure 
and sound advice. 

True, most of us could hardly depend on 
our own choice now^ to guide our appetite; 
for instinct has been so hampered and 
thwarted and choked and disregarded that 
it has almost ceased to operate altogether. 

31 



When we ought to consult it in regard to 
the conduct of the body, for the maintenance 
of this physical life, it is really not our in- 
stinct that we consult at all, but our reason. 
We have made so much of reason that we 
cannot get it out of the way and allow instinct 
to govern for the moment. Yet there are 
regions of activity where instinct should lead 
and reason only advise. You and I each have 
an instinct as to what is best for us in food 
or rest or sleep or exertion, if we would only 
cultivate it, only give it play in our lives. 
And if that instinct were educated, it would 
guide us quite as infallibly in these matters 
as our reason does in matters of actual knowl- 
edge and thought; quite as infallibly as our 
conscience does in matters of right and wrong. 
Our instinct is a sort of conscience for the 
body, and deserves our care and obedience 
just as much as does that preceptor of morals. 
But we must not limit the realm of instinct 
to the governance of the animal body. We 
must recall that it is a human instinct, and 

32 



sue ZvulntuQ of mutlntt 

has sane wisdom applicable to all the doings 
of men. If I meet a new acquaintance, my 
judgment of him must be made up from my 
instinctive perception of the man, as well as 
from the deductions of reason and intuition. 
I shall be told certain facts concerning him, 
perhaps, and to these facts I apply logic. I 
shall also have certain more or less definite 
feelings about him, both sentimental and sym- 
pathetic (or antipathetic), and these feelings 
are derived from intuition and instinct. I 
shall know immediately something of him 
spiritually. I cannot tell how; and I shall 
know something of him through my senses, by 
instinct. 

It is good to reason and to make the reason 
supreme in this life. But it is fatal to dis- 
regard either intuition or instinct. And of 
these two indispensable guides, instinct is the 
most neglected, the most in need of reinstate- 
ment in our regard. 



33 



iWDl^ina-^ag 



Moving - Day is not a festival the sentimen- 
talist loves. For him it is a time of memories, 
redolent of old sorrows and vanished joys ; he 
clings to his associations, and changes his 
home reluctantly. It is his habit to invest 
things with an aroma of dedication, if I may 
say so, as ancient churches are saturated with 
incense. Everything he has ever owned pos- 
sesses for the sentimentalist attachments 
hardly known to the literal mind. And the 
larger, the more universal the possession, the 
stronger the attachment. So that his home, 
his town, his native country, take hold of the 
sentimentalist's heart with ropes of perdura- 
ble toughness. In this respect you may say 
that the sentimentalist belongs to the cat fam- 

34 



ily. He is very imperfectly domesticated, but 
his habit of locality is phenomenally devel- 
oped. He has none of that doggy loyalty 
which would lead him to desert the ancestral 
fireside without a pang, if ever friendship 
should demand the move. Thinking himself 
all heart, he is sometimes a heartless creature, 
living on atmosphere and losing the solider 
joys of loving. 

Your true sentimentalist, too, is a prince of 
procrastinators. He cannot bring himself to 
a decision, and action affects him like the 
rheumatism. Witness " Sentimental Tommy," 
whose soul abhorred the necessity of choosing, 
as a hen abhors water. While other men are 
making fortunes, building houses, marrying 
beauties, discovering the south pole, establish- 
ing trusts, ruling savages, or overturning em- 
pires, your sentimentalist is making up his 
precious mind. Like the rustic, he waits for 
the river to run by; and, while he stands emo- 
tionalizing and moralizing, the stream of 
events has moved swiftly on, carrying the 

35 



©tie ffvimtfnftip of att 

flotsam of fortune beyond his grasp. You 
may even hear him bemoaning his destiny, 
when a little timeliness, a little presence of 
mind, a little zest and courage would have 
saved the day. 

To move, to break up one place of abode, 
to carry all his household deities to a new 
altar (to flit, as the Scotch idiom so pictur- 
esquely has it) is an abhorrence to the senti- 
mentalist. I confess I am very much of his 
turn of mind in this matter. Unless one has 
been ill or unhappy in a place, with what 
misgivings one leaves it! The last stick of 
furniture has been carried out, the last picture 
unhung, the last grip packed and ready, even 
the cane and umbrella are strapped together. 
Then as you take another look through the 
familiar rooms, so changed by the desolation, 
have you not a horrible foreboding qualm? 
If ever the fluctuating sentimentalist in you 
is to get the upper hand, now is his time. And 
it may need some stout common bravery of 
heart to keep him in place. 

36 



But the more sane and courageous attitude 
toward change accepts it as a step in growth, 
in development. The moral of " The Cham- 
bered Nautilus " will come home to every 
one, and we may sweeten the uses of adversity 
by a severe resignation. The new dwelling 
must often be narrower and less commodious 
than the old. But what are the requisites we 
look for in seeking an abiding-place? Light, 
air, sun, good soil, neighbours, quiet. And 
still there is one thing more too often neg- 
lected — the personal atmosphere of the new 
room or the new dwelling. Every room, if 
we would but try to perceive it, has its own 
peculiar atmosphere. It affects us pleasantly 
or unpleasantly, as the case may be. All its 
past history, the lives and passions, comedies 
and woes, aspirations and failures, of its 
former occupants have all left upon it traces 
of their influence; and thereafter it is im- 
possible for a new occupant to dwell there 
without sharing in the experience of the old 
one. An inheritance of association passes on 

37 



Silt iFtitntrsfidi of Mvt 

with every house to its new tenant, and this 
we cannot escape. It is useless to try to 
ignore it; it were wiser to recognize the 
subtle quality of each room we go into, to cul- 
tivate a sensitiveness in that direction, and 
never to do violence to it if we can help our- 
selves. This would be a novel consideration 
in home-making and house-hunting. We 
should not look at the locks and the paint 
alone, nor consider the costliness of construc- 
tion; we should close our eyes and feel the 
atmosphere of the place; we should try to tell 
whether or not we are likely to be happy 
there, whether or not we are in sympathy with 
the former owner, whether we are to be aided 
or annoyed by the endowment of association 
he has left behind him. 

Of course, there are our own discarded 
impediments as well. If we are to be so par- 
ticular about the atmosphere into which we 
move, we shall have to see to it that the asso- 
ciations we leave behind us are not inimical 



38 



to the happiness of others, at least that they 
are not evil. 

The spirit, too, has its moving-days and its 
times of house-cleaning, as well as the body. 
For months and years we may be dependents 
on some great spiritual teacher, Carlyle, or 
Arnold, or Newman, or one of the ancients. 
We go in and out, and carry on our daily sub- 
sistence, as tenants of his philosophy, secure 
in his sheltering thought. But some fine May 
morning along comes a gust of fancy and per- 
suades us to move. We find ourselves dissat- 
isfied with the old lodgings and set out to seek 
for new; or perhaps in racing down some un- 
expected street we have come upon a domicile 
that took our eye. Plato can detain us no 
longer; we are going to become retainers of 
Aristotle. So the spirit passes from one 
master to another, from one abiding-place to 
the next on the long quest for a perfect dwell- 
ing. None of them, perhaps, will be found 
perfect, though none is to be despised. Seren- 



39 



®iie :ffvitvCiiUt^ip of ^tt 

ity, cheer, encouragement, valour, are to be 
found under many a roof where we least ex- 
pect them. These are the qualities to look for 
in the new lodging. 



40 



^ Sea-Eum 



It is a New England term, and you may 
hear the good Bostonian any hot summer day 
prophesy a sea-turn with falling night. It 
comes suddenly, too, sometimes nipping the 
unwary and mauling the frail. You must be 
no weakling if you are to live by the sea, even 
in July. She is a rough nurse, and cherishes 
her strong sons by the easy process of eliminat- 
ing their tenderer brothers. The seaboard 
folk are hardy, you notice. Those who took 
hurl from the rude play of the elements have 
been disposed of. They sleep well under the 
gray stones. 

I remember one blazing morning several 
years ago. It had been an insufferable night, 
when you were content to lounge about the 

41 



2CJie :ffvitnti^ftip of Mvt 

empty streets of Beacon Hill and rest on the 
deserted stone door-steps. Indoors there was 
nothing to breathe. Up over this city of 
dreadful night rose the brassy, unmitigated 
sun, till the asphalt sizzled in the steaming air. 
The whole town went to its office in shirt- 
sleeves — almost. Will you believe it? — be- 
fore noon the newsboys were crying extras of 
the great change of temperature. The east 
wind was on us like a frost. The wise ones 
sought a thicker coat, but the foolish took 
off their hats, let the cold wind blow under 
their arms, and many of them never needed 
a coat again. 

But for the average being (or perhaps one 
should say for the normal — that is somewhat 
better than average), the sea is a wonderful 
mother. And the dweller by the coast, wait- 
ing for the sea-turn to come in on the wings 
of the east wind, is a mortal favoured beyond 
his fellows. The cool of the mountains is not 
the same thing; it is a rare tonic shock, stim- 
ulant, thin, and keen, with nothing of the 

43 



motherly befriending touch of the sea's 
breath. For the coolness of the hills seems 
to be what it really is — the exhaustion and 
vanishing of all warmth, as if one were left 
to perish for lack of the generous sun. In that 
high, pure atmosphere the arrowy rays come 
down unobstructed and burn to the bone at 
times, but the moment our lord of day is be- 
hind the hill not a trace of his presence re- 
mains, not a vestige of all his vehement 
fervour. There may not be a ghost of air 
stirring, yet the chill is about you on the 
instant, and woollens are comfortable. It is 
like being left in a vault, for all you are on 
the roof of the world. 

The cool of the sea is a positive thing. 
In the first place it has a very real savour, 
and perhaps that helps to delude us; though 
I fancy the feel of it is different, too. Not 
so dry as hill cold, its touch must be softer, 
more velvety, with its cushion of humidity. 
It is more alive, too. How should it not be 
so, blown off the face of the breathing sea? 

43 



8Cfie :ffvimX(uftip of Mvt 

And this wonderful life, this aliveness of the 
sea, it must be which impresses the inlander 
and the mountaineer. It may be that, as a 
people, whose fathers have been seafarers and 
maritime for hundreds of generations, we are 
under the sway and superstition of the ocean. 
One cannot be sure. And as you or I come 
within sound of the shore after a long ab- 
sence, perhaps it speaks to us as it would not 
speak to men of an immemorially hill-bound 
race. Certainly it has more to say to one than 
the lofty homes of the forest and the eternal 
peaks that hold up the canopy of blue. And 
you may repeat with Emerson: 

" I heard, or seemed to hear, the chiding sea 
Say, Pilgrim, why so late and slow to come? 
Am I not always here, thy summer home ? 
Is not my voice thy music, morn and eve? 
My breath thy healthful climate in the heats, 
My touch thy antidote, my bay thy bath? " 

But of all sea poetry, perhaps no verses have 
more of the sea's true rhythm, sombre and 
noble, than Rossetti's "Sea-Limits:" 

44 



" Consider the sea's listless chime; 
Time's self it is made audible — 
The murmur of the earth's own shell. 
Secret continuance sublime 
Is the sea's end. Our sight may pass 
No furlong further. Since time was, 
This sound hath told the lapse of time." 

There is in these lines (is there not?) the 
slow cadence of the surf, the dirging under- 
tone of mortal sorrow. The same note and 
feeling are in Arnold's ^' Dover Beach:" 

" Only from the long line of spray, 
Where the ebb meets the moon-blanched sand, 
Listen! You hear the grating roar 
Of pebbles, which the waves suck back and fling 
At their return, high up the strand, 
Begin and cease and then again begin. 
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring 
The eternal note of sadness in." 

There is an impressiveness in store for the 
citizen who comes out of his city to confront 
either the world of ocean or the world of 
hills; but they will affect him in different 

45 



2Ci|e jfvltvCtinftip of art 

ways. The mountains may be your friend, but 
the sea is your lover. Those serene heights 
that have stood unmoved so many countless 
years, how they pique our thought — the eter- 
nal repose unanswering the restless mind. You 
may live with them in respectful companion- 
ship (if you are rightly modest and patient 
and lowly-minded), and after many days you 
may come to find that they have impressed 
upon your unworthy self something of their 
own austere character, their Spartan forti- 
tude. But the sad-voiced sea is not so soli- 
tary nor so taciturn. All her turbulent, dis- 
traught life is yours in a moment. She is for 
confidences immediately, and never wearies 
all day of recounting the ancient story of her 
perished pride and innumerable tears. In her 
voice is the wistfulness of ages, and, as you 
listen, the echo beats and reverberates through 
your own human heart. You need not be a 
sentimentalist to know this. And, as I say, 
one never can know the true truth about na- 
ture, one can only know the apparent truth; 

46 



and that is so largely a matter of heredity, 
a matter of our unnumbered experiences since 
the first sunrise. Perhaps if a creature were 
to come into this earth endowed with senses 
and perceptions like our own, yet without our 
heritage of sentiments and our ageless endow- 
ment of emotions, the sea might seem to him 
to sing the gladdest songs. But to us who have 
lived by her side so many thousand gray years, 
with all their sea tragedies, sea sorrows, sea 
changes, it cannot be so. We unconsciously 
find in the face of the earth a likeness of our- 
selves. And we shall never in this world be 
other than prejudiced observers. But, then, 
our business is not to find gladness everywhere 
in nature, but to bring gladness everywhere 
with us. 



47 



Manilas ^anttatum 



" Vanity of vanities, saith the preacher, 
vanity of vanities; all is vanity." And what 
you may find to remark in this well-worn note 
of tribulation is the fact that it is the saying 
of a preacher. Then further we may query: 
In what other profession than that of the 
preacher will a man come so abruptly upon 
a sense of the tcedium vita? So powerful is 
the reflex and hypnotic influence of actions, 
the professional faultfinder soon becomes 
both victim and example to his own tirades. 
What is less lovely than a scold, or more pit- 
iable than a buffoon confirmed in his buffoon- 
ery? 

Emerson has a pregnant thought in one of 
his brief poems: 

48 



Vmitun Vmitatnm 

" * A new commandment,' said the smiling Muse, 
' I give my darling son, thou shalt not preach ' — 
Luther, Fox, Behmen, Swedenborg, grew pale, 
And, on the instant, rosier clouds upbore 
Hafis and Shakespeare, with their shining choirs." 

It is the same thought that has led us by 
common consensus of critical opinion to con- 
demn the didactic in art, and prefer those 
artists who stick to beauty pure and simple. 
As good comfortable Fra Lippo Lippi has 
it: 

" If you get simple beauty and naught else. 
You get about the best thing God invents." 

Here is at once a sanction for the best and 
the lowliest efifort of art, the truth which re- 
wards and satisfies the eminent master, and 
also encourages and consoles the humble 
craftsman. It dignifies not only all art but 
all work. Our fine arts and handicrafts are 
perfected and ennobled, when once we treat 
them with this cheery and loving thought 
in mind. Whether the work is an epic or 

49 



a bookbinding or the setting of a precious 
stone, it is all one in importance if only we 
are careful to dignify the task with love and 
devotion. Beauty calls for our best, and only 
by giving our best in the service of beauty 
can we learn to fully appreciate the delight 
that beauty offers us in return. 

If it is true that every one should take some 
manly share in doing the necessary work of 
the world, it is probably just as true that every 
one should have some active interest in one 
of the fine arts. To speak more truly, per- 
haps, there should be no divorce between 
work and art; and I dare say that not until 
all work can be done with the workman's 
whole heart can we have the best results. At 
present, in a time which we are pleased to 
call complex, this does not seem quite possible. 
Most men's occupations call for a stress and 
hurry that preclude the slow care which art 
demands. Certainly, however, the artistic 
method is to be attempted wherever it is pos- 
sible. Certainly, too, we shall be wise if we 

50 



Tanltun Tan(tatuin 

make time (however busy we may fancy our- 
selves) to take up some form of art or handi- 
craft on which we may expend enthusiasm. 
For then we shall be getting " simple beauty 
and naught else." We shall need neither to 
preach nor be preached to any more. Even 
the higher journalism will become superflu- 
ence. We shall be so busy enjoying ourselves 
in our way, we shall have no time to spend 
on the questionable task of trying to improve 
our neighbours. 

T am much mistaken if the first preacher 
was not the first idler, a brazen skulker from 
the field where his sedulous companions were 
toiling in the sun. He probably went home 
to discourse to his appreciative family on the 
proper methods of agriculture and the sin of 
laziness. 

Vanitas vanitatum, et omnia vanitas. And 
served him right that he found it so! Had 
he preached less, perhaps, he would not have 
discovered vanity so quickly. But why is it 
dangerous to preach? Because it is danger- 
Si 



®!ie :ffvitt(tfnliip of art 

ous to do anything that is not done with the 
whole being, and preaching is too mental a 
performance. The calling of the preacher, 
in the pulpit or in the press, has too little con- 
nection with activity, and enlists only the 
forces of mind and spirit, with too little re- 
gard for deeds. The artist must not only rea- 
son out his work, he must love it and execute 
it himself. That piece of work is ill done, 
whether it be painting or paving, to which 
there did not go a modicum of love and 
thought and energy together. No two will 
serve alone. If you will seek out a successful 
mechanic, or sailorman, or musician, or mule- 
driver, — one who puts brains and heart into 
the work of his hands, — I think you will find 
he hasn't much time left for lamentations. 
He doesn't know what tcedium vitce means, 
and he wouldn't know any better if you trans- 
lated it for him. But it never ought to be 
translated. And whenever you hear a man 
going up and down the world reviling the 
times continually — he is a preacher. If he 

52 



TnniUu Tnnitntnva 

isn't a preacher by profession, he is a preacher 
by nature, which is worse. The habit of 
preaching has taken hold upon him, and is 
eating into his vitals. " Happy is he who 
has been apprenticed to trade and taught to 
preach beaut'} with his hands," says the Book 
of St. Kavin. 



53 



Ci)e Confemporarg Spirit 



One's first impulse is to say of the contem- 
porary spirit: There is the infallible guide, 
the exemplar of conduct and achievement! 
It seems to us that one thing needful is to live 
and work in accord with the spirit of the 
times. This, indeed, is largely true. To be 
out^of joint with our own time is to be in bad 
humour with ourselves. Whereas the secret 
of efficiency is to be well attuned with our- 
selves and our surroundings. 

One easily remarks the great men who have 
been hands and voice to the time spirit, and 
one sees how irresistibly they have gone for- 
ward in their cause, toiling and resounding 
through the earth. They have been so evi- 
dently moved by a power whose whole limits 
they did not themselves comprehend; pos- 

54 



©tie eontentjiotars Si»ivit 

sessed by a glorious idea; inspired by a splen- 
did thought; carried out of any petty con- 
ception of life, or any selfish, self-seeking aim, 
and borne on the great universal current of 
progress. The mind feeds upon the events 
and aspirations of its time as a plant feeds 
upon the soil and air of its own valley. And 
it is a mark of greatness and robustness of 
mind to be able to assimilate wholly and read- 
ily the material brought into contact with it. 
Not to be nourished by the sunshine of the 
hour is to begin to wilt and fail. 

And yet, in another way, it is quite as neces- 
sary to disregard the contemporary spirit, and 
follow only the teaching of the cosmic spirit 
— the spirit which takes small heed of men 
and events and passing modes. It has the 
trend of larger progress in its care, and dis- 
regards the smaller ebb and flow of local 
currents. The contemporary, on the other 
hand, it must be remembered, is ever in dan- 
ger of being diverted and absorbed in the 
trivial and the unnecessary, the foolish and 

55 



®tje :ffvitnXfnftip of art 

the futile. The contemporary spirit not sel- 
dom becomes jaded and debauched and in- 
effectual from a multiplicity of detail and a 
diversity of interest. The contemporary spirit 
is very human, very like our lesser selves ; it 
is by no means always up to its better self; 
it often fails of its ideal ; is hasty and short- 
sighted and frivolous. It is, really, nothing 
but the force of average humanity at any one 
time, realizing itself in its own creations. 

The uncontemporary spirit, on the other 
hand, is the power of humanity's better self 
accomplishing large purposes, fostering lofty 
aims, keeping in sight pure ideals, and pon- 
dering on the past and the future while it 
still must toil in the present day. It cares 
little for reward, save that of its own appro- 
bation; does not hesitate nor falter nor com- 
promise; but is frank and insistent and of 
large endurance. 

It is the uncontemporary spirit that is the 
genius of discovery and art and invention. 
It is the devoted imaginers who have been the 

56 



benefactors of their race. The contemporary 
spirit is self-seeking, self-satisfied, self-suffi- 
cient; the great upholder of things as they 
are, it sits stolid and somnolent in the pew 
corner. It scoffs at liberty, praises antiquity, 
and prophesies ruin. 

The contemporary spirit always has an eye 
to the main chance; it feathers the nest, pro- 
vides the dower, lays by for a rainy day, lives 
in the passing hour, and dies eternally, for 
all we know to the contrary. Of what service, 
then, are the contemporary and the uncon- 
temporary spirit to be to the artist? They 
must serve him, I fancy, very much as he is 
served by his dual self, with the wisdom of 
the serpent and the wisdom of the dove. 
There will always be active within him the 
conflicting, yet parallel, desires — the inclina- 
tion to adapt vague, unrealizable dreams to 
the comprehension and utility of his time, and 
the stubborn disinclination to alter his ideal 
for any use whatever. 

Yet we must remember that all art, like 
57 



STil^ SfvlttiJtnftip of art 

life itself, is a compromise — a compromise 
between what we would and what we can. 
On the one hand is the artist's mind, to which 
come fancies, thoughts, pictures, ideas, half- 
comprehended by himself, never yet articu- 
lated or declared for others, and unimagined 
by the great world of his fellows to whom he 
would address himself; on the other hand is 
that stubborn world of media, the rough ma- 
terial of sounds and colours, which is to be 
made plastic by the artist's hands, which is 
to be made to convey his meaning. How is 
he to express to others the new thing, which 
as yet he can hardly define to himself? Evi- 
dently he must compromise between perfect 
faithfulness to the vision and intelligibility to 
his auditors. He must be content to convey 
only a part of his own impression in order 
that his expression of it may pass on to others. 
And here is always the artist's dilemma, and 
his need for self-surrender. Not what he 
would say, but what he can say, must still 
sufBce him. So to lay the colour that it may 

58 



enshrine His new dream of beauty, yet retain 
so much of its old disposition that men be- 
holding will recognize and comprehend it 
still ; so to dispose and array these old words 
as to make them embody a shade of meaning, 
an influence, an infusion, unguessed before, 
yet at the same time not to wrench or distort 
them from their common acceptation — to use 
them with great freedom and novelty, yet not 
to startle their timorous inheritors. 

To be fresh, to be original, to be conclusive, 
to be untrite and compelling, yet to be allur- 
ing and convincing and seductive also; to 
astonish and overcome and carry wholly 
away, yet never to antagonize nor offend — 
there is a task for a summer's day. And al- 
ways while the contemporary wisdom of the 
serpent is teaching the artist patience and 
tolerance, and to be contented with little, the 
uncontemporary wisdom of the dove is bid- 
ding him contend for the manifestation of 
his best self, for the uncompromising realiza- 
tion of the prophecy and the dream. 

59 



iiottitulture 



The lover of rose-gardens doubtless is 
master of a blameless joy. He is a leisurist 
first of all, delighting in the quiet life and 
silently acquiescing in the great law of the 
unimportance of the individual. He has his 
pleasure of life behind his garden walls, in 
sunshine and seclusion, while the pageant of 
the world goes by with all its drums and 
pennons. With shouts and cheers and martial 
strains the concourse is parading down the 
road ; but your rose lover only sees the dust, 
only feels the confusion, and turns to his 
flower-beds with a happy heart. Let others 
do what they will, his soul prefers peace and 
the quietude of his own small plot of earth. 

60 



^ovtitnUnvt 

Yet he is no idler. With diligence he tends 
his beloved companions — trims and waters, 
shelters and weeds, with untiring zest. And 
all his reward is beauty, the generous respon- 
sive beauty of the earth — the soul of the 
ground made visible in roses. At nightfall, 
I doubt not, he has dreams of his own. In 
the silent silver moonlight, sifting through the 
tall elms, he broods among his sumptuous 
beauties slumbering on their stalks. He de- 
vises new varieties to be evolved in time ; he 
lays out new domains for crimson favourites, 
and brings wild corners under cultivation for 
his lovely friends. His mind is not idle, you 
may be sure, as he paces to and fro in the 
warm air under the stars. He is an artist and 
a labourer in one; to the labourer's rewards 
of careless health and freedom of mind, he 
adds the artist's joy. 

The elements are kind to the lover of flow- 
ers; sun and rain and air conspire to second 
the toil of his hand ; and while he sleeps his 



6i 



designs are being accomplished. Of what 
other craft can so much be said? 

It was not really the compensations of gar- 
dening, however, that I had in mind when I 
began these notes this morning, but the pleas- 
ures and rewards of a different sort of culture, 
which gardening only symbolizes. I mean, of 
course, the culture of ourselves. For every 
one of us is a garden. I may be full of nettles 
and pigweed; you may be full of lilies and 
lavender. You may have a rich, deep soil; 
mine may be sandy and dry. You may bask 
toward the south in the sun of circumstance, 
while I have to front the north of dreary ad- 
versity. Still, here we are awaiting the gar- 
dener's care. Let us go in and cultivate our- 
selves. For, if you think we can lie here in 
the weather waiting for some fabulous divine 
gardener to come along and do all the weed- 
ing, and digging, and sowing, and scuffling 
for us, while we have only to bloom and ab- 
sorb moisture, you are sadly in error. There 
is no gardener but oneself. And you may 

62 



^ovtitnUnvt 

construct a fine esoteric poem on the subject;^ 
concluding with the line: 

" Myself the weeder and the weed." 

This is a mystery, but it is sober truth, too. 
And the garden in which we are placed may 
be divided, for convenience, into two or three 
parts. There is the garden of the mind, for 
instance, which we are sent to college to culti- 
vate. And there is the garden of the body, 
which we too often shamefully neglect. In- 
deed, some misguided folk would have you 
believe that the one is' a rose-garden, while 
the other is only a despised vegetable patch. 
But this is not true, as every man who has 
tried faithfully to cultivate his body knows. 
If you have never made the attempt, why 
not take up the care of your body for one 
year. Find where it needs attention. Lavish 
upon it all the thoughtful consideration you 
would give to the culture of your mind. Tend 
it with patience, enrich it with understand- 
ing. Work with all the science and enthusi- 

63 



sri^e iFrtentri^tifii of art 

asm of a true horticulturist. And watch for 
the flowers of grace and strength to grow and 
prosper under your care. 

Very likely your body is sadly neglected. 
You must overlook the whole ground, first 
of all, to see where there is the greatest need 
of attention. You will probably have to have 
some advice at first, for an instinct for per- 
fection is apt to be blunted from long disuse. 
But, once aroused, it will soon revive to its 
normal function; you will begin to know 
intuitively what foods are good, for instance, 
and what exercises most helpful. 

If your wrist is stiff and your arm unlimber, 
take some exercises that will correct the fault. 
Then diligently practise that gymnastic, and 
watch the results. You will begin to see per- 
fection of arm movement and wrist motion 
gradually spring into life like fair, unfolding 
blossoms. You will be capable of beauties of 
graceful exertion which you never dreamed 
you could possess. 

If your voice is weak and unmusical, learn 
64 



to breathe;- then learn to produce tones; then 
learn the right conformity of the mouth for 
the production of the legitimate sounds of 
speech; then learn to add expression. You 
will find you have acquired a beautiful torso 
and a fine carriage, better possessions than we 
often buy. 

And so on through all the muscles and 
members; let none be neglected, for none are 
despicable or useless, and all are needed for 
the final perfection. Your great reward will 
come, when (long after you have cast off all 
harmful and absurd restrictions of fashion) 
your culture begins to show itself in perfect 
mobility and poise, and when, as a last test of 
normal being, you begin to be aware of the 
rhythms of your own body. Most of us pass 
our lives without ever being once awake to this 
sense of divine joy, this rapture of musical 
motion. And yet rhythmic mobility is a 
source of happiness, a means of health and 
a magical creator of beauty. 

It cannot surely be very long before we 
65 



Ztt JfvlmTfufilp of art 

amend our standards of education, so as to 
place the body on an equal footing with the 
mind. We are suffering for our neglect. If 
we make body culture as important as mental 
and spiritual culture, we should be much hap- 
pier, for we should be much better balanced 
and much more normal. All the attention 
wc have come to give to sports and out-of-door 
pastimes is itself evidence of our instinctive 
tendency to better things, to a completer cul- 
ture; and still we are only beginning to learn 
the possibilities of bodily culture, and its im- 
perative necessity as a factor in human per- 
fection. 



66 



Speetj^^ Culture anis 



The relation between speech-culture and 
literature may not be apparent at first glance. 
Not only does it exist, however, but it is fun- 
damental and therefore of prime importance. 

Consider for a moment the position of lit- 
erature among the fine arts, and some of the 
qualities inherent in literature which make 
it a fine art. 

But what do we mean by the fine arts? In 
what do they consist? What characteristics 
have they in common by which we may dis- 
tinguish them? We may say theoretically 
that art is nothing more nor less than the 
result of man's attempt to give expression to 

67 



his thoughts, his aspirations, his hopes and 
fears, in forms of beauty. We may say, 
briefly, that art is the manifestation of the 
human spirit. But everything we do is to 
some extent expressive. Our acts, our looks, 
our gestures, the tones of our voice, may all 
be said to be expressive in that they convey 
to others some impression about ourselves. 
An advertising sign on the fence is a form 
of expression, in that it serves to convey in- 
formation from the proprietor to the public. 
Indeed, nothing that man does can be wholly 
without expression. How, therefore, can we 
distinguish these forms of expression which 
are worthy to be termed the fine arts? 

If I say to you that a plus b equals c, or that 
2 plus 2 equals 4, I am giving expression to 
a statement which appeals at once to your 
reason. It requires only your mind to appre- 
ciate the information. You don't care any- 
thing about it. But if I say, " the sailor and 
the hunter have come home," that piece of 
information begins to interest you. I begin 

68 



SiiertJ|=eultttte uvea mttvutuvt 

to touch upon your emotions. You fancy 
there is to be more of the story; you like the 
sailor better than the hunter; or perhaps you 
wish that the hunter had returned alone; at 
all events, your sympathy is awake, and await- 
ing the development of the story. It is no 
longer a pure and simple statement of fact, 
such as we had at first in 2 plus 2 equals 4. 
Now, if I go further and quote you Robert 
Louis Stevenson's line: 

" Home is the sailor, home from sea, 
And the hunter come from the hill," 

What is the result? We not only have our 
mind informed as before; we not only have 
our emotions enlisted as before; we have our 
senses appealed to as well. The statement 
already had mental and spiritual qualities, 
and now there has been added to these a phys- 
ical quality, the quality of beauty. These 
three qualities of truth, spirituality, and 
beauty are the essential characteristics of all 
the fine arts. And among all the achievements 

69 



STije JfvitnXful^ip ot art 

and activities of mankind, no form of expres- 
sion can be classed as a fine art unless each 
of these qualities is present. And, also, any 
industry may at any moment rise to the height 
of a fine art if the workman is given sufficient 
freedom and has sufficient talent or genius. 
In that case he will impress upon the work 
something of his own personality; he will 
make it expressive of himself; he will put 
into his work reason and love and beauty. 
He will make it appeal to our mind, our 
spirit and our aesthetic sense. 

You see, then, that these three distinguished 
characteristics of art are representative of the 
threefold nature of the artist. And these three 
qualities, inherent in every work of art, im- 
planted there by its human creator, a reflected 
image of himself, will in turn appeal to the 
living trinity within ourselves. All art has 
charm; it has what Rossetti called funda- 
mental brain work; it has emotion. To say 
the same thing in another way, art must make 
us satisfied and glad and content; it must 

70 



give us something to think about, something 
to love, and something to recall w^ith a thrill 
of pleasure. 

It is the province of art, of every art and 
every piece of art, to influence us in these three 
ways. And any artist whose work is lacking 
in any one of those directions is in so far a 
limited and imperfect creator. 

Art, then, is the result of man's attempt 
to express himself adequately, with intelli- 
gence, with power and with charm. But 
when we say that art is the embodiment of 
expression, that does not mean that the ex- 
pression is given necessarily a permanent 
form. Some of the arts, such as architecture, 
painting, and sculpture, are dependent on 
materials for their embodiment. But their 
greater or less permanence has nothing to do 
with their essential qualities. It would not 
detract in the least from the excellence of a 
painting if it were destroyed the minute it 
was finished. Other arts, again, like music 
and dancing and acting, are merely instan- 

71 



2Ct)e ffvitn^u'^ip of art 

taneous, and have no permanence whatever; 
they perish more quickly than the impulse 
which produced them, except in so far as they 
can be preserved in the memory and repro- 
duced by imitation. 

Now, in order to arrest the perishable 
beauty of these instantaneous arts, certain 
mechanical inventions have been devised 
from time to time — the invention of writing, 
of printing, of photography, for example. 
And by their useful means creations of art, 
which must otherwise be lost to the world, 
may be preserved and transmitted and mul- 
tiplied for the enjoyment of thousands. And 
the point I wish to emphasize is, that music 
and literature are in precisely the same case 
in this respect. Literature, like music, is de- 
pendent on writing only as a means for its 
preservation. All its essential qualities, like 
those of music, are perceived only when it 
is reproduced as modified sound. And in 
Stevenson's lines, which we quoted a moment 
ago, you remember that we found he had 

72 



SiieetJ|-©ulttttt anir mttvutnvt 

taken a simple statement of fact, which con- 
tained truth and interest, and had raised it to 
the dignity of poetry, by adding a single qual- 
ity — the quality of beauty. His genius and 
knowledge of English gave him the power of 
arranging a few words so that they should 
not only interest us as they had done before, 
but should enthral us with a new and added 
charm. That charm was the charm of sound. 
Or to take another example, take this sen- 
tence, '' So, among the mountains by the win- 
ter sea, the sound of battle rolled all day 
long." There is a statement of fact, a bit of 
expression, which conveys information and 
which has interest. But now listen to the 
same words when Tennyson has added beauty 
to their thought and emotion: 

" So all day long the sound of battle rolled 
Among the mountains by the winter sea." 

This new beauty is purely a beauty of 
sound. Tennyson's taste as an artist led him 
to perceive, when these sixteen words were 

73 



so arranged as to produce their greatest 
charm, their maximum effect upon us. 

I must conclude, therefore, that poetry, or 
literature, is an oral art. And the aspect of 
it, which appeals to an aesthetic sense, does so, 
and can only do so, through the harmonious 
arrangement of melodious words. 

If I repeat, then, that it is the inherent 
characteristic of art to be beautiful and to 
appeal to our sense of beauty, and, further- 
more, that the only way literature has of ful- 
filling this condition and becoming a fine art 
is by the beauty of the spoken word, I think 
we may very safely conclude that any com- 
position which fails in this test fails of being 
literature. 

And further, this relation between litera- 
ture and speech is not only a fundamental one, 
but its maintenance must have an important 
effect. Literature is, as it were, only a glori- 
fied form of speech, produced with greater 
care and skill and forethought. The litera- 
ture of a nation is the quintessence of the 

74 



Siintii=®uUttte nrOi mttvntnvt 

speech of the nation. Think for a moment 
what sometimes happens when any commu- 
nity becomes detached from the current of 
civilization; when it becomes isolated and 
narrow and self-centred. It often happens 
that these impoverished communities deteri- 
orate rapidly, and that they show mental 
weakness, moral depravity, physical debase- 
ment. Had their speech become as corrupt 
and inefficient as themselves, you would not 
have expected literature from such a people. 
On the other hand, think of the case of those 
nations which have reached a high grade of 
civilization in the world's history. They have 
always been nations which have bequeathed 
to us valuable and significant treasures of 
literature and the plastic arts. Indeed, we 
have no means of measuring the greatness of 
a people except by the fine arts it encourages 
and produces. For the fine arts, as we said, 
are only the embodiment of man's aspirations 
and ideals. The surpassing literature of 
Greece and Rome is a true exponent of the 

75 



2Ci|^ :ffvitnrfutii» of art 

degree of civilization at which they had ar- 
rived. And it is, too, simply a record of their 
speech. It were surely impossible that Greek 
poetry and Greek prose should exhibit such 
qualities of perfection as they do, unless the 
Greek tongue had first attained those same 
perfect characteristics, those traits of power 
and beauty and adequateness of expression. 

If we do not admit this and still profess 
to think there is no relation between speech 
and literature, we are driven by the force of 
logic to admit that Shakespeare's plays might 
quite well have been written by some wise old 
Chinese philosopher, who was a deaf mute 
and spent his whole life in a hermit's cell. 

If I could acquire a knowledge and use of 
language such as Stevenson possessed, such 
as two or three people of my acquaintance 
possess; if I could know the English tongue 
with all its shades of meaning and subtle as- 
sociation; if I could use it with readiness, 
with exactness, with copiousness, with feeling; 
and if, in addition to this, I could acquire a 

76 



S»eecii=euUttte ai«r mttvutnvt 

beautiful and well-controlled voice, such as 
one occasionally hears, so that after I knew 
my words I could make use of them, I should 
in that case not only be a better educated man, 
but I should have greater power. I should 
have given myself the rudiments of a literary 
education (such as is nowhere provided in our 
schools or colleges), and I should have fitted 
myself as a citizen to be one of that intelli- 
gently critical public without which the fine 
arts cannot flourish, cannot, indeed, exist. 
Moreover, I could fit myself to be an intelli- 
gent and sympathetic, though obscure, appre- 
ciator of the art of literature in no other way 
than by these two means. 

I do not know how it may be with you, 
but I cannot recall more than half a dozen 
people among those I have ever known who 
possessed this happy degree and kind of cul- 
ture. If, however, instead of being so rare, 
speech culture were made prevalent; if such 
knowledge and power of expression could be 
made almost universal, consider what a public 

77 



SCiie Sfvitnn^ftip of art 

we should have! And think how impossible 
a great mass of our contemporary litera- 
ture, with its barbarous offences against good 
taste, its ruthless disregard of beauty, its atroc- 
ities against English speech — think how im- 
possible such work would be. Do you think 
that a wide-spread culture of our own lan- 
guage, a national instinct for exact, flexible, 
and pleasing speech, would have no influence 
upon our literature? I find it difficult to 
imagine a perfected standard of diction and 
literary mediocrity existing in the same na- 
tion at the same time. 

As bearing directly on the question, allow 
me to quote a fragmentary poem by Richard 
Hovey, entitled: 

*'THE GIFT OF ART 

" I dreamed that a child was born ; and at his birth 
The Angel of the Word stood by the hearth 
And spake to her that bore him : * Look without ! 
Behold the beauty of the Day, the shout 
Of colour to glad colour, rocks and trees 
And sun and sea and wind and sky! All these 

78 



Are God's expression, art- work of His hand, 

Which men must love ere they may understand, 

By which alone He speaks till they have grace 

To hear His voice and look upon His face. 

For first and last of all things in the heart 

Of God as man the glory is of art. 

What gift could God bestow or man beseech 

Save spirit unto spirit uttered speech? 

Wisdom were not, for God Himself could find 

No way to reach the unresponsive mind, 

Sweet Love were dead, and all the crowded skies 

A loneliness and not a Paradise. 

Teach the child language, mother. . . .' " 

This, then, is the very brief statement of 
the bearing of speech culture upon literature, 
as it appears to me; and our investigation 
closes here. In conclusion, however, I should 
like to guard against the implication of an 
overestimate of the value of the fine arts and 
their importance in life. If one insists on the 
vital necessity for education in expression, it 
is not merely to the end that the fine arts may 
flourish. For though the fine arts are lovely 
and desirable in themselves, they indicate the 

79 



existence of something even more wonderful 
and desirable — they indicate the presence of 
an instinct for truth, an instinct for goodness, 
and an instinct for beauty in the people which 
produced them. They reveal, as I think we 
said before, the high degree of civilization 
which that people had been fortunate enough 
to reach. 

If we give ourselves to the culture of ex- 
pression, we shall undoubtedly have greater 
art as a result of that education. But its best 
result would be the effect upon ourselves; 
for in the process of that culture, in the calling 
forth of the capacities which reveal them- 
selves in art, we shall be developing those 
powers which alone enlighten and ennoble a 
nation. 



80 



®n JSeinfl ©oJjerent 



There is a coherence of bodily action, just 
as there is a coherence of speech. And the 
one is no less essential than the other, either 
for expressing our thoughts or accomplishing 
our wishes. 

We commonly speak of a man's utterances 
being incoherent, meaning by that that they 
are unintelligible or inarticulate. In the rad- 
ical sense of the word, of course, we mean 
that the man's speech does not cohere, does 
not "hang together," as we say. One part 
of It has no logical relation with another part. 

So in bodily action ; many of us are afflicted 
with an incoherency of motion, and do not 
relate the different movements or acts of the 
body. One man has an excellent chest devel- 

8i 



opment and strong arms, with a miserable 
pair of legs. Another has good legs and feet, 
but a weakly upper body; a third, all arms 
and no back; a fourth, all back and no arms. 
And these defects our physical training (un- 
der the evil influence of college and profes- 
sional athletics) does little to help. True, the 
best teachers of physical education are wholly 
against the sort of training fostered by com- 
petition, intercollegiate and international, but 
public sentiment is too strong for them. The 
men want the prizes and the victory more than 
they want wholesome, all-round development. 
So they continue to overexercise their strong 
muscles and neglect their weak ones. As a 
consequence, they lack coherence of strength. 
But there is a worse defect, the result of 
competitive emulation, and that is incoherence 
of action. Even when a man is well developed, 
he is very often without prompt and intelli- 
gent coherence of action. He has no coordi- 
nation ; does not act as a single being, with his 
will and mind and muscles at once. If there 

82 



®n nttns eoHftent 

is a step to be taken, he steps with his leg 
alone, the rest of his body having nothing to 
do with it. If anything is to be lifted from a 
shelf, he allows his hand and arm to do it, 
while his body is almost inert. You perceive 
at once that he is not an alert, complete indi- 
vidual, thoroughly vitalized from top to toe, 
but rather a bundle of arms and legs and 
fingers, all equally strong, but all working at 
haphazard, under separate impulses. There 
seems to be no central determination, no in- 
dwelling and directing, purpose. The man 
has no coherence of muscular action. 

If this truth is not obvious in others, it 
becomes quite clear, I think, when we observe 
ourselves, and if we note the different ways 
of doing things. And it is easy, with a little 
care and training, to note the improvement 
in ourselves in this matter of physical coor- 
dination. It is a means of economy of force 
and increase of power not to be overlooked. 
To cultivate physical coherence implies, too, 
the culture of more than bodily powers. It 

83 



©tie iFt:(enlrsJ)iiJ of 'Mvt 

implies the culture of the powers of spirit and 
mind as well. For we cannot improve our 
physique, in strength, in promptness, in skill, 
without necessarily improving our faculties of 
determination and judgment at the same time. 

You may be quite sure that a man of slov- 
enly, shambling appearance has a slovenly, 
careless character; that a sturdy and trim fig- 
ure houses a reliable being, and so forth. This, 
of course, we all commonly recognize. But 
we fail, I think, to act on the truth. We fail 
to make the further deduction, which is so 
obvious, that, since person and personality are 
so closely related, we can educate the one by 
means of the other. Yet, as a matter of fact, 
this is the very thing we can do in physical 
training. By training the person in better 
modes of motion and carriage and speech, 
we educate the personality behind it, and give 
that personality new endowments of gracious- 
ness and beauty and charm. 

This better education of the individual, in- 
deed, should constitute the aim of physical 

84 



training. The mere culture of muscularity 
or bodily power alone is not enough. And 
as long as athletics remain the sole end and 
aim of gymnastics, just so long will they re- 
main in the inferior position they now hold. 
But gymnastics in education are as important 
as philosophy, or languages, or science, or the 
fine arts. And under wise provision, they 
must come to hold a more and more important 
position in all curricula of training of the 
young. 

The range of physical culture is not lim- 
ited, but almost illimitable ; and we are only 
on the threshold of our knowledge in regard 
to it. Physical culture engenders and devel- 
ops not only physical coherence, but personal 
coherence, personal poise and power. It 
helps forward that perfection of the character 
for which we are all striving, and helps it as 
nothing else can. It is the foundation on 
which all our education must be built. Our 
bodies in w^hich we live are the media through 
which we must communicate with others. 

85 



®8^ J^rftnJrsiifji of ^vt 

All our thoughts and actions, sorrows, joys, 
and fears, desires and demands, can only be 
conveyed to our fellows through these bodies 
we inhabit. We can accomplish nothing 
without their assistance. It is just as true, 
too, that all information comes to us through 
them. To attempt to educate the mind and 
heart, without educating the body, is more 
foolish than it would be to give a man all the 
learning of the ages, and then doom him to 
solitary confinement for the term of his nat- 
ural life. 

I fancy we have not often enough consid- 
ered the beauty of a coherent personality. 
Yet think how powerful it may be! Even 
in the one realm of the physical personality, 
how full of power and charm coherent action 
is! You may see it in a juggler or a tight- 
rope walker, in exhibitions of great skill and 
sleight-of-hand, and it never fails to delight 
and entrance. We cannot all be jugglers; 
we cannot all be even skilful; but certainly 
we can all be less slovenly and unwieldy than 

86 



®n iJeinfl eotietent 

we are — and add to the pleasure of life 
thereby. For life is a good deal like walking 
up the bed of a rocky stream, after all. You 
must step always with precision and intelli- 
gence, or you break your shins and wet your 
skin. A wise foot makes an easy journey. 

Then, too, is it not coherence of character 
that makes success? Is it not the power of 
holding ourselves together, and having an 
aim, and insisting on one thing at a time, that 
brings us what we want? The flabby, wob- 
bling, uncertain character accomplishes none 
of its objects, however determined it may be. 
There are some people with as little coherence 
as a jelly-fish — aimless organisms afloat in 
the tide of circumstance — pulpy nonentities 
stranded by a single wave, torn asunder at 
a blow. We must do better than that. 

And as our progress in the world is so 
greatly dependent on this power of just co- 
herence, this pulling of ourselves together, 
and holding our powers in command, who 
shall say that the very possibility of a con- 

87 



^^t iFtitnlTfiitiiji of att 

tinued life for the spirit may not depend on 
something of the same power? If I am con- 
tent to live and stand and walk and occupy 
furniture like a mould of blanc-mange on a 
dish of china, does it seem that I shall be well 
prepared for immortality? I fancy that when 
old, familiar, friendly Death came by, he 
would find in me a mound of glutinous plas- 
ticity, nothing more. It must be another sort 
of coherence which is to stand the test of 
change and growth and joy. 



S8 



©il^infl anif SCafetttfl 



Emerson, in his essay on " Compensation," 
says that he had long wished to draw atten- 
tion to that important law of the universe. 
Giving and Taking, the law of exchange, is 
merely a part of compensation. 

The capacity for giving and taking is an 
elemental one. In all nature it seems to be 
the most primary law of life. The very 
weathering of rocks means that they receive 
the sun and frost and rain, absorb them, trans- 
mute them by chemic change, and then give 
off the resultant dust and detritus — infini- 
tesimal portions of themselves to be returned 
to the great clearing-house of nature. 

A grade higher, in the plant world, the ex- 
change is more apparent. The flowers and 

89 



trees and grasses, the whole sensitive covering 
of the earth, taking from the elements and 
giving to the elements, seem to have no other 
function than this process of exchange. The 
living organism of the flower is, we know, 
endowed with capacities and needs for receiv- 
ing light and moisture and warmth from the 
heaven above and the earth beneath. Sun- 
shine and dews and showers and the more 
solid elements of the ground are received by 
it and made part of its very composition. It 
has the power to take of these passing phe- 
nomena just so much as it may need and trans- 
form it by a secret law into a part and parcel 
of its own singular beauty. The flower is born 
after its kind, but hour by hour, day by day, 
year by year, minute by minute, it is sustain- 
ing its life, its individual self, from particular 
qualities which it takes from its surroundings. 
And also minute by minute and year after 
year the flower or the tree is giving again to 
the world about it something of itself — seeds, 
perfume, shade, and falling leaves and petals. 

90 



Evidently it could not go on for ever, or even 
for an hour, receiving sap and air and giving 
out nothing in return. One-half of its nature 
would be paralyzed; it w^ould begin to die. 
It v^ould begin to perish just as surely as if 
it ceased to receive and continued to give. 
The power of exchange, the power of receiv- 
ing and giving, is the very vitality of the 
plant. 

This equal law runs on up through the 
higher grades of created things. The crea- 
tures which move over the face of the ground 
and with conscious desire seek their nourish- 
ment here and there are really doing only 
what the flowers do. They feed on this and 
that, some on herbage, some on other flesh; 
they inhale, some by air and some by water, 
the oxygen they need; they are warmed to 
what degree their nature requires. Always 
they are taking from the world about them 
those elements necessary for their subsistence, 
and always they are giving back again these 
elements, after they have transmuted them to 

91 



their own use, or rather to their own nature. 
In growth, in energy, in motion, in deeds, the 
animal is constantly giving out to the earth 
about it an equal compensation for all it re- 
ceives. 

How all these processes are carried on, 
ministering to life from hour to hour, and 
transmitting that life from generation to gen- 
eration, we can largely understand. The pa- 
tient and devout labours of science are daily 
making it clearer to us. But why they are 
carried on does not yet appear. Science shows 
us wonder after wonder of beautiful law and 
orderly succession, and gives us the clear rea- 
son for this or that method of procedure, and 
yet stands abashed before the final query. 
Why the beaver should build his house isi 
clear enough. He wishes to survive the iron 
winter, and his wisdom has contrived that 
admirable plan of doing so. Why he should 
wish to survive, no man can tell. I know why 
I go to market and to the tailor's and to the 
bookshop, and why I do a hundred things; 

92 



it is because I am glad of life. I know that 
I am glad of life; I know how I am glad 
of it; but why I am glad of it I do not know. 
If I knew that, I should know everything, 
for the What, the How, and the Why are all 
there is of the universe. It sometimes seems 
as if we might comprehend the what and the 
how, the physical and mental, of the universe. 
But the why, the spiritual, is still hidden. 

In man's life certainly, as in the lower 
manifestations of existence, the law of give 
and take obtains. And there, as in the sub- 
human kingdom, that process of transmuta- 
tion, that change of what we receive into what 
we bestow, is the essence of life itself. You 
and I, like our friends the trees and our 
cousins the creatures, are every moment re- 
ceiving. We must have air and light and 
food and water to cast into the crucible of 
the body and be transformed into blood and 
bone. Every moment we are parting with 
some transformed remnant of this matter 
in exhalations of the lungs, and evapora- 

93 



tions from the skin. This is only the grosser 
and more obvious transformation of matter 
in which we participate. But there are finer, 
more delicate changes as well. Our need of 
rest and activity is the need of chemical 
change in the tissues of muscle and nerve. 
And while the changes of circulation and 
breathing are instant and imperative, the 
timekeeping rhythms of life, other energiz- 
ings and recuperations are more leisurely — 
eating and abstinences, sleeping and waking, 
for example. In all these operations there 
is the obvious rhythm, a balancing of receipt 
and output. 

So, too, in a still more intangible way, the 
impressions we receive are transmuted by our 
own thought and emotion, and are then given 
back again to the world in words and looks 
and actions, as expressions of ourselves; so 
that expression is nature plus personality. 
The best thought of the world, the most 
beautiful art treasures that we have, are the 
creation of man, no doubt. Yet whence did 

94 



they come -to him? Did he not first receive 
them as impressions of the natural world 
about him? Then having made them his 
ow^n, he gave them back again. First the tak- 
ing and then the giving. 

Always, through every metamorphic pro- 
cess, we may notice how imperative it is that 
the rhythm be kept up. Indeed, it is impossi- 
ble that existence should continue unless both 
functions are being performed. In the world 
of organized being there can be no such thing 
as giving constantly without receiving, for 
exhaustion and death would follow quickly. 
On the other hand, there can be no such thing 
as receiving continually without giving forth 
again, for death, though more tardy, would 
be no less sure. Starvation will produce 
death, but so also will a coat of varnish over 
the body. In the one case, our power of re- 
ceiving is interfered with; in the other, our 
power of giving. Life is a stream for ever 
flowing through these fragile and diaphanous 
shapes of ours. 

95 



2Ciie iFtttnlTfiiJiiii of ^tt 

Just so, too, our spiritual or intellectual life 
is always fleeting, passing, renewing itself. I 
am myself for a few years or decades; but 
I am not the same without change for two 
moments together. And the obvious thought 
to be derived from this physical life is, that in 
the higher as well as in the material existence 
there must always imperatively be a balance 
of giving and taking, perceiving and express- 
ing. It is this thought which shows us the 
folly of greed, the absurd ambition which so 
easily besets us to possess everything which 
pleases us. Do you wish to own a whole 
museum of beautiful objects? Do you not see 
that, according to the laws of life, you could 
never keep these things for yourself? You 
would have to give them away again in one 
way or another. What you really need, that 
you may take, and that no one can keep from 
you. Do you think the one success in life is 
to receive and have? Under the pinch of 
hunger and cold, it seems to you that death 
through poverty is the only horror in the 

96 



world to be guarded against. It seems to you 
that those who have devoted all the splendid 
energies of man to receiving and acquiring 
alone are the fortunate ones of the earth. You 
think that what is called wealth is the one 
thing needful. But if you look a second time, 
and consider all the persons of affluence whom 
you know, and all those whom you see in pub- 
lic places, you will perceive that many of 
them are dying as certainly as the destitute, 
perishing of inertia, a dyspepsia of body and 
spirit. And because they are so mistaken, 
those poor, unhappy, fat people, trundled use- 
lessly by in their carriages are as deserving 
of your pity as the beggar on the sidewalk. 

Between giving and taking lies the nice 
poise or calm which is the gladness of life 
itself, perhaps. 



97 



^Tije ittui of ittt 



As in Homer's line, " Many are the tongues 
of mortals, but the speech of the immortals 
is one,'' so the secrets of the artist are many, 
but there is only one secret of art. Lacking 
that, we may spend lifelong toil in the pur- 
suit of perfection; we may master a bril- 
liant technique and compass the profoundest 
thought; the architecture of our work may 
be sound and its finish flawless; none the less 
without the secret it will be futile. We may 
heed every tradition, follow every hint of 
written or unwritten lore; yes, and we may 
even fling every accepted creed of our craft 
to the four winds, and build anew with the 
intuitive instinct we call originality, so that 
we will endure awhile, filling all eyes with 
wonder and every mouth with praise, and yet 

98 



?rfie Sntrtt of att 

we will fail ultimately if the secret was not 
in our heart. 

There is a sort of greatness about a true 
masterpiece that makes itself felt we hardly 
know how, that moves us we do not know 
why; just as there is a sort of greatness about 
some men, which compels an unreserved en- 
thusiasm and loyalty toward them. It is the 
quality which endears people to us. This 
man may be brave and irreproachable; that 
one may be clever to bewilderment; yet, if 
they are not lovable, we meet them and part 
without regret. They convince us, and charm, 
and even win; yet a moment later we are left 
as cold as before. Here may be a play, or a 
book, or an exhibition of pictures, which is 
the talk of the town, and which dazzles the 
sense with its novel beauty; yet somehow, 
while drawing our utmost commendation and 
provoking not a single palpable criticism, it 
never stirs us from the centre of our being. 
We sit in approving calm, even with generous 
applause, unwarmed, unfired. 

99 



But show me, perhaps, ever so hasty a 
sketch of gray morning, a half-finished scrap 
of purple sea-beach, or a couple of stanzas 
like 

" Under the wide and starry sky, 
Dig my grave and let me lie," 



or,— 



The year's at the spring. 
The day's at the morn," 



and just because it has the echo of the secret 
in it, I shall never recall it without a quick- 
ening joy. It has entered in to be a part of 
me for ever; and whatever I do, whatever I 
say, will have in it some minute reverberation 
of the echo of that secret. 

What quality of art can it be, so magical, 
so vague, so strong? You must ask first what 
quality it is in men. For art is no more than 
the universal speech of humanity; and what- 
ever taint there is in a character will be be- 
trayed in the voice; though only the wise 
know this. What quality is it in the personal- 
ity that makes it most memorable to its fel- 

lOO 



STJie Secret of art 

lows? A man to be remembered must have 
endeared himself to men. He will not be 
remembered for wealth, nor power, nor wit, 
unless he have used it beneficently, winning 
regard as he won command. So you may say 
love is the secret of art, as it is the secret of 

life. 

To be inevitable (in our recent phrase), 
to have the inescapable magic, this is the aim 
of the artist. If you analyze this strange po- 
tency, it seems to resolve itself into the essence 
of endearment. It is; as we say, the heart of 
the matter; it draws our attachment, our un- 
reasoned devotion, our love. There are, of 
course, works of mediocre value, which enlist 
the crudest affections, and yet are patently 
false and worthless to the better judgment; 
but I do not mean these watery sentimental 
things. I am speaking of the rare achieve- 
ments of art, such as came from the hands of 
Blake and Corot and Wordsworth. Think, 
for instance, of that beautiful lyric: 



lOI 



" I wandered lonely as a cloud, 
That floats on high o'er vales and hills." 

You would not say that it embodied a very 
common human sentiment; you would say 
it is rather a poem for the cultivated. And 
yet, I think, the quality in it which holds us, 
the indwelling spirit behind that bewitching 
mask of words, is the spirit of love. The 
heart of the man, one is sure, must have been 
greatly moved before he could speak so. And 
we, in our turn, are greatly moved under the 
spell of that wizard cadence. At first it might 
seem a mere trick of the senses, a skill in 
accents, the craft of melodious syllables. It 
is more than that. We say it is intensity or 
lyric ardour. But no craftsmanship, however 
cunning, can match that volatile charm, nor 
arrest the fleeting glamour of such lines. 
Yet surely, if the wonder worker were only a 
master of skill and no more, his intricacies 
could be studied and his secret caught. But 
no, strive as we may, there is no imitation of 
consummate art possible. You can no more 

I02 



8Ciit Setttt of art 

make a new poem which shall be Words- 
worth's, than you can make a new man out of 
clay. 

The secret of art and the secret of nature 
are one — the slow, patient, absorbing, gen- 
erous process of love — sustaining itself every- 
where on loveliness and life, and remanifest- 
ing itself afresh in ever new forms of vitality 
and loveliness. It is because of this quality, 
and in proportion to this quality that we 
value every shred of art, and are at such pains 
to preserve it. By the simplest natural law, 
humanity cares for those things which ame- 
liorate its lot, and lets go in the long run 
everything that hurts or retards it. If a man 
is mean or cruel or false or self-absorbed, his 
force and cleverness may still carry him far; 
indeed he may come to great eminence in 
fame and power. The deep, foolish, blind 
heart of goodness in man is deluded by his 
display. But by and by, in the advance of 
thought, he will be forgotten, because his unit 
of influence was never for the best, was never 

103 



8Ci|e iFtfenlTfiiiifii of att 

needful for sustaining the world. In the en- 
largement of aspiration in man, whatever 
hinders that development will be abandoned. 
We shall not be fooled for ever. And he only 
is on the winning side, who can see in the 
march of history a laborious trail cut through 
the underbrush of experience from darkened 
valley to sunlit crest, who can perceive 
whither the blind by-paths led the lost adven- 
turers, and who will hold resolutely to that 
steep road — the prevailing undoubtful trend 
of truth. 

Of nations you may say the same, and of 
art you may say the same. There have been 
unnecessary tribes that have perished in their 
inutility, because in the large wise scope of 
progress, in the preservation of the fair and 
the good, they had no part to play. And in 
art, which is only the embodiment of the hope 
of the world, all that was petty or self-centred 
has perished and is perishing from day to 
day. It has endured for awhile; it has 
pleased us by its cleverness, or beguiled us 

104 



8Ctlt Settet of 'Mvt 

by its charm, when we have been too near to 
understand its tendency. With man's avidity 
for truth and goodness (in spite of a mon- 
strous inertia), he is ready to follow the wild- 
est departures which promise more light and 
a liberation from wrong. But as these prove 
unavailing, he will leave them for others. 
The history of art, like the history of man, 
is a jungle full of blind trails leading no- 
whither; and you will find they were aban- 
doned because they did not lead toward good- 
ness, toward what was good for man; because 
they did not make toward the spaciousness 
and freshness of truth. 

Long ago, of course, art was more simple 
and unconscious than it has since become; 
and the devout soul of the artist dwelt in his 
deft fingers. It was impossible for him to do 
anything without conviction; he had never 
heard of technique; and the pride of barren 
skill had not been born. The man and his 
work were one. This is not to say that con- 
summate care for workmanship, and untiring 

105 



diligence for perfection, are wrong; it is 
merely to say that between the soul and the 
body of art there can be no divorce — that 
each is necessary, and neither can survive 
alone. 

Is modern art frivolous, vapid, unmanly? 
Pray who made it so? Any art is just as 
great as the age that produced it. And for 
my part I do not believe that art can fail any 
more than I believe that speech can cease, 
or nature withhold her changing seasons. If 
we are fallen on paltry times, as some would 
have us believe, let us change the times. The 
earth is just as fair and beautiful and generous 
as it ever was; and we are coming to under- 
stand it better than our fathers could. Let 
us love it as well. Have done with falsehood 
and greed, and the millennium will begin to- 
morrow, with paradise in your own dooryard. 
There is no other spirit in which life can be 
made worth while, and there is no other 
secret of a great art. 



1 06 



S ^amn of Ctittetsm 



It has always been a difficult problem with 
critics how to redeem criticism from the mere 
vagaries of personal whim and reduce it to 
the orderly dignity of a science. It is easy 
for the man of cultivated taste to say, " this 
pleases me," or, ^' that seems to me unlovely; " 
and the great mass of our current criticism 
has no other logic. In an estimate of art, we 
are dependent on just such arbitrary judg- 
ments of critics — honest opinions, indeed, 
but without any philosophic basis. Now how 
are we to improve upon these obiter dicta? 
Is there no sound canon of criticism to be 
substituted for this haphazard method of 
judging a work of art? 

To answer these questions we had better 
107 



8Ci)t iFtirnirj^jjffl of ^tt 

ask ourselves again for the thousandth time, 
What is the nature and purpose of the fine 
arts? In the first place, it will recur to us, 
the fine arts are a natural product of human 
imagination finding expression in various 
forms through various media. Such a prod- 
uct inevitably embodies the characteristics of 
the creative impulse to which it owes its ori- 
gin; and if we would inquire w^hat are the 
invariable and inevitable essentials of art, — 
of all the arts, of music, poetry, painting, and 
the rest, — we must ask what are the invari- 
able and inevitable characteristics of human 
nature. For whatever features human nature 
presents, we shall surely find in any work of 
human nature. Now one of the most salient 
features of human nature is this, that it has 
not one but three distinct ways of appreciat- 
ing the outer world. It perceives things about 
it by means of the senses; it apprehends cer- 
tain stated facts as true and others as false; 
and it looks on the universe always with a 
partial spirit — has preferences and likes and 

io8 



H eanon of evtttrtfiini 

desires. To put it in plain terms, we are made 
up of body, mind, and spirit, indissolubly 
linked together. 

Now not only will all art, therefore, show 
traces of this threefold nature of man ; it will, 
in its turn, appeal to man in each of these three 
ways. Art must convince our reason, it must 
enlist our sympathy, it must charm our sen- 
suous nature. 

To accomplish the first of these objects art 
must be true — true to life, as we say. It 
must preserve such a semblance of reality that 
even when it is incredible we shall be half- 
inclined to believe it. And this verity, on 
which so-called realists insist so strongly, 
while it is not the end of art, is certainly the 
beginning. More than this, the subject-mat- 
ter of art must be truth. No art can be worth 
while which makes no attempt to satisfy the 
curious mind of man. 

To accomplish its second purpose, the 
arousing of our emotions, art must itself be 
impassioned. However profoundly true an 

109 



SJie iFrirnlrsJitii of att 

artist's convictions may be, however v^ise his 
philosophy, however comprehensive his ac- 
quaintance with science, he will for ever fail 
to engender the stir of action in his fellow 
men, if he cannot impart warmth to his pro- 
ductions and the vital force of love, or hate, 
or fear, or courage, or wonder, or whatever 
passion he will. So that looking upon his 
work, we may admire his skill, and agree with 
his conclusions about life, but we shall never 
be really influenced, nor be moved to alter 
our own conduct a hair's breadth on that 
account. And his work, though brilliant, will 
be faulty and futile. 

To accomplish its third purpose and bring 
us palpable pleasure, art must be beautiful; 
this is the business of technique. And while 
this requisite is likely to be overemphasized 
by the artist himself, it is quite as likely to 
be undervalued by the layman. 

This is particularly the case in our own day 
in regard to art. A distracted and uncertain 
age, astonished with the many revelations of 

no 



science, must necessarily find itself engrossed 
more with the matter than with the form of 
art. We demand of art an answer to our innu- 
merable problems. This answer it is part of 
the business of art to give. But in our haste 
we forget that no answer, however conclu- 
sive to our reason, which is not at the same 
time consummate in expression and stirring 
with ardour, can ever be final. We ask what 
literature has to say, and care very little how 
it is said; in fact, we demand from literature 
what more strictly belongs to science. And 
since poetry is the one sort of literature in 
which the form is made of equal importance 
with the substance, we are inclined to be in- 
different to poetry altogether. 

But the temper of any period is, perhaps, 
never wholly perfect; it always shows a bias 
in one direction or another. One age may 
insist on the excellence of the physical, the 
necessary element of sensuous enjoyment, the 
paramount need for beauty in the world; the 
next may insist quite as strenuously on the 

III 



eternal dominance of spiritual and religious 
qualities in life; while the third is engrossed 
with eager thought, with science, with meta- 
physics. So that at no time do we have man- 
kind engaged in the effort to establish a bal- 
ance between these three diverse yet insep- 
arable phases of our nature. And yet that 
is the one thing we must attempt if we would 
help ourselves forward on the interminable 
pathway of perfection. 

When we shall have established the worthi- 
ness of such an ideal, when we shall have 
begun to make it prevail among men, then 
we shall have at hand not only a canon of 
criticism, but a canon of conduct and culture 
as well. Even now we may begin to apply 
such a standard of criticism to every kind 
of art, indeed to all our civilization, whenever 
we have need to bring any work within the 
range of judgment. We shall no longer be 
slaves of personal caprice, dependent wholly 
on our individual point of view, often all the 
more vehement because it is irrational. 

112 



Nothing human, indeed, will be alien to us, 
but, on the other hand, nothing human will 
seem excellent which does not make at least 
some pretence to represent human nature in 
its entirety, which does not tend to foster and 
encourage that threefold ideal. Men and 
manners, art, industry, and religion, every 
guise in which our activity shows itself on 
this earth, will be subject to this unique ir- 
refutable canon. 

If a new and deservedly popular novel 
comes up for discussion, we shall say of it, 
perhaps : " Yes, it has great beauty and 
strength; it moves us profoundly; and yet, 
after all, it does not give us any sound or 
comprehensive judgment upon life; it is in- 
effectual in its philosophy." Here would 
be an instance of a work of art lacking on 
the mental side. Or again it might have a 
different fault. It might be profoundly keen 
and discriminating in its psychology, stirring 
in its appeal to our sympathy, and yet after 
all so slovenly and ill done as to be wholly 

113 



8C|ie iFtteniTfiiiidi of ^vt 

wanting in beauty. There would be an in- 
stance of neglect of the physical side of art. 

So, too, of a painting or a statue or a piece 
of music, our first question must always be, 
How does it respect the great law of normal 
human development, how nearly does it come 
to representing normal poise? Of human 
character, also, when we come to discuss its 
merits and defects, we shall be able to say, 
this one was at fault here, another was at 
fault there, because of a lack of force, or a 
lack of emotion and will, or a lack of reason- 
ing capacity. 

It is the business of art to charm and enter- 
tain us; it is the business of art to move and 
inspire and ennoble us; and lastly it is the 
business of art to enlighten us. To see that 
art does this is the business of criticism. 



114 



Eealtem in €tiitm 



The question of realism in art after all 
must surely be one of quantity and proportion. 
Every one must agree that a certain amount 
of realism is needed; the difficulty is only to 
know how much. That art must be an image 
of nature goes without saying. It is the busi- 
ness of art to create a mimic world in which 
we may take delight. The features of that 
world must in the main resemble those of our 
own old and well-loved universe, else we 
should be set to wander through a country so 
strange that we should soon be lost. 

Perhaps our first pleasure in art is a child- 
ish delight at its verisimilitude. " How true 
to life," we exclaim, as the eye recognizes 
in the human creation a likeness to something 

115 



in the outward world. Unmitigated realism 
would in truth give us nothing else. And the 
pleasure which a great many people get from 
current fiction and contemporary art depends 
on having this very simple and childish sense 
gratified. They like stories about places that 
are familiar to them, and concerning types 
of character entirely within their range of 
comprehension. Anything exceptional and 
unusual demands an effort of the imagination 
before it can be appreciated; and this effort 
the average mind is unwilling to make, — so 
lethargic and timid are we for the most part 
in facing the unknown. 

But the best art and literature are always 
exceptional. There is always a quality of 
adventure in them. They represent the cou- 
rageous daring of the artist in creating new 
forms, in propounding new truths, in estab- 
lishing newer and nobler standards of con- 
duct and enjoyment. They reflect the prog- 
ress of humanity. Not only that; they foretell 
and direct progress. All the ideals which 

ii6 



MtuUum in Uttttv^ 

humanity has put in practice with so much 
pains and toil were first enunciated by the 
artist, and by him presented to us in alluring 
and intelligible shape. It is never enough, 
and it never has been enough, that the arts 
should give us only images of things we know, 
and proclaim accepted truths. They have 
always had another trend as well ; they have 
always been employed in expressing novel 
truths, no less important than the old, and in 
clothing those truths in new forms no less 
beautiful than the older forms to which we 
have been accustomed. 

Art and literature, therefore, have never 
been mere copies of nature; they have always 
contained the element of novelty, — a novelty 
more radical and profound than the fortui- 
tous variations of nature. The forms of na- 
ture are, indeed, beautiful, varied, and satis- 
fying; and the forms of art must have these 
qualities, too. At the same time they must 
have much greater flexibility and power of 
adaptation than the forms of nature. Nature, 

117 



so far as we can observe, proceeds by a law 
so stable as to seem unchanging. The growth 
of man proceeds in the guidance of a quest- 
ing and illimitable imagination. So that the 
settled and infinitely deliberate procedure of 
nature will not serve his restless purposes at 
all. Unless he can add thought to nature, — 
unless he can introduce imagination and fore- 
thought and invention and hope and aspira- 
tion into life, — how much better is he than 
the creatures? 

Now whatever comes under the head of 
art, whether literature or painting, music or 
sculpture or acting or architecture, being the 
expression of man, must reflect his inward 
life, — his words and thoughts, his instant 
desires and his far-off hopes or fears. If art 
were no more than an imitation of nature in 
faithful guise, it would surely never have been 
born. Certainly it could never have attained 
any exalted place in our esteem such as we 
have accorded it; nor could it have wielded 
that incalculable influence which we know it 

ii8 



Mtulium in Uttttvu 

has always possessed. It is only because art 
and literature are supernatural that they pull 
at our hearts for ever. It is only because they 
partake at times of the superhuman, deriving 
an inspiration rW^e know not whence, that they 
offer us an unfailing source of refreshment 
and power. They embody for us average men 
and women suggestions for a life more fair 
and perfect than ever occurred to us. They 
not only indicate an existence more worthy 
and beautiful than our own, they actually 
portray it. That is why we enjoy them ; and 
that is the only reason that we enjoy them 
without satiety. Once given the perilous gift 
of self-consciousness, the large slow content- 
ment of nature is no longer possible. We 
must have ideals, however faulty, and beliefs 
and opinions, however erroneous. These be- 
liefs and ideals it has always been the destiny 
of art to embody. That is the one great busi- 
ness of art. And as our beliefs and ideals 
grow with our growth, they find new housing 
for themselves first of all in the arts. 

119 



8^5^ iFtienlTfiititji of ^rt 

Realism, then, is essential, but it is not 
everything. The Palace of Art is built to 
house a more admirable company than any 
of our present acquaintance. The members 
of that company may even seem at times al- 
most more than human. And yet they must 
remain like ourselves, and the Palace must 
remain a possible palace, else we lose interest. 
The soul can only be touched with emulation 
by what comes within range of its own power. 
Art must be realistic, or it will have no hold 
on our interest; it must be more than realistic, 
or it will not be able to make that hold per- 
manent. It must present the ideal at least 
as vividly as it does the real, for the one is 
as important as the other. 

As we go about this lovely world, scenes 
and incidents attract us and enchant us for a 
moment or for longer. And these scenes we 
delight to recall. We travel, and we bring 
home photographs of the places we have vis- 
ited, reminders of our happy hours. It would 
seem that nothing could be more faithful than 

1 20 



these mechanically accurate reproductions of 
the face of nature. And yet they are not 
wholly satisfying; a fleeting glimpse preserved 
in a sketch in pencil or water-colour may be 
far more satisfactory. The photograph re- 
produces a hundred details which the eye 
missed when it first came upon the scene; and 
at the same time misses the charm and the 
atmosphere with which we ourselves may 
have endowed the place as we gazed upon it. 
The sketch, on the other hand, omits these 
details, just as our eye omitted them origin- 
ally, and yet preserves the atmosphere of our 
first delighted vision. Can it be said then 
that the photograph is more true than the 
painting? More true to the object, yes; but 
not more true to our experience of the object. 
And that is the important thing; that is what 
art must always aim at. 



121 



Ci)e Mott of ®latrne00 



There is some inherent reason for the 
rightness of joy in art. It holds its place there 
by a title even more inalienable than its title 
to a place in actual life. There is reason, too, 
for a belief in joy as the core and essence of 
good art, as the one ingredient most needful. 
For joy is, as it were, the last grain to turn 
the balance; it makes all the difference be- 
tween success and failure, between life and 
death. Joy, mere gladness in living, is the 
tiny increment which keeps life dominant and 
sane. When that is taken from us, we are 
left to slow or swift disintegration, disaster, 
dejection, and death. 

Of all the good gifts which ever came out 
of the wallet of the Fairy Godmother, the 
gift of natural gladness is the greatest and 
best It is to the soul what health is to the 

122 



body, what sanity is to the mind, — the test 
of normality. The most fortunate of mortals 
are those whom Nature has endowed with a 
wholesome power of assimilating life, just as 
she endows her field-bred children with a 
good digestion. A quick and ready appetite 
for life, a capacity for smiling contentment, 
and a glad willingness, are the great things, 
— these and courage. For after all life needs 
courage, long-enduring, stubborn, unflinching 
courage. The bare problem of life is so dif- 
ficult, the fine art of living so well-nigh im- 
possible, that surely no man yet can ever have 
looked at it with realization without a sud- 
den terror at heart. Yet there is laid upon 
us all the prime duty of joy, the obligation 
to be glad, the necessity for happiness. 

In spite of pain and failure and weariness 
and exhaustion, happiness is still our business, 
the one thing to be attained and maintained 
at all risks and costs. It is not cheap, cannot 
be bought in the open market, is not to be 
confused with the pleasure of the moment, 

123 



which is often only distraction. Sometimes 
the Great Vender says to us: "Would you 
buy happiness? Very sorry, sirs, but happi- 
ness is particularly scarce to-day. The crop is 
not overplenty this season. Here is some 
pleasure, however, much cheaper and almost 
as good. We sell a great deal of it. Many 
of our customers prefer it to the genuine arti- 
cle. May I put you up a sample?" 

Now, woe be to you, beauteous mortal, if 
you listen to that strain. Against that falla- 
cious but alluring speech you are to set your 
face for ever like a rock. Have happiness or 
nothing. How are you to know the false from 
the true, do you ask? Well, we are provided 
with an instinct in that direction, and you will 
find it is not easy to deceive yourself for long 
with any specious counterfeit of joy. True 
happiness differs from pleasure in being more 
thorough, complete, and indubitable. We 
are so constituted for it, so dependent on it, 
and so immemorially nourished by it, that the 
substitution is palpable at once. Happiness 

124 



is really a complete poise of being, and comes 
upon us only when we have secured a measure 
of health, a measure of certitude of mind, and 
a measure of rectitude of conduct. So small 
a thing can overturn it! A little overtaxing 
of the physical powers, a little misuse of any 
faculty, a little deflection from the ways of 
kindliness, sincerity, frankness, and all our 
balance and self-poise may be undone, all our 
modest store of happiness scattered to the air. 
Now, whatever the strange element of sad- 
ness or evil may be in the great universe, it 
seems that all men and women may be divided 
into two great classes, — the majority, which 
is always for progress and assurance and glad 
certainty about life, and the minority, which 
is full of trepidation and fear and gloomy 
foreboding. We each of us belong to the 
one party or the other, the successful or the 
unsuccessful, the brave or the timid, the happy 
or the sad. It is an innate difference, a pre- 
natal endowment, possibly; as if from the 
first we had been destined for the one faction 

125 



of humanity or the other, — the great ma- 
jority or the great minority, the joyous or the 
sorry-hearted. Yet much may be achieved by 
culture, and we must never capitulate to the 
odious doctrine of original depravity. 

There are in art also, which is no more than 
an image and reflection of life, two main 
trends, — the greater trend toward gladness 
and faith and strength, and the lesser trend 
toward sorrow and doubt and decay. To the 
one belong the masters, to the other the minor 
craftsmen. A minor poet or a minor painter, 
as it seems to me, is not essentially minor be- 
cause of the slightness of his gift, but because 
of its timorous and uncertain quality. And 
the big men are big because they have the 
gift of gladness. Or is that they are glad and 
well assured because they are big? Sure it 
is, in any case, that the two phenomena appear 
together. 

And that, too, is natural, for on the prin- 
ciple that to him that hath shall be given, the 
strong acquire strength, the glad acquire new 

126 



gladness, taking these treasures from their 
weaker fellows. So the great, glad, strong 
world, the vast majority, cares most for 
strength, for sanity, for gladness in art and 
letters, as it does in life; while the utterances 
of sorrow and the voices of doubt are obscured 
and lost. We care in the long run only to 
preserve the work of the masters; while the 
work of the minor artists, however charming, 
passes with its age. 

True, there is always a note of wistfulness 
in art, as there is in life; and it must be pres- 
ent even in the strongest, gladdest utterances, 
else they could have no profound hold upon 
us. The great works of art and literature are 
those which represent life in its entirety, with 
its dominant desires and joys, indeed, but with 
its heaviness and sorrow and dejection as well. 
Any piece of art which should be wholly 
given over to the predominance of animal 
spirits, or of unmitigated joyousness, with no 
trace of the tedium of time or the bleak lone- 
liness of the soul, could have no abiding claim 

127 



Ci&e :ffvitnXfufii» of art 

to universal regard. It could not speak to 
universal man in his common tongue. For 
joy, after all, is aristocratic; and those im- 
mortal teachers on whom the world has loved 
to lean have also been well versed in the 
democracy of sadness. They have taught us 
that it is a prime duty of the heart to rejoice, 
yet they themselves have ever known how 
hard that duty is. 

So in art, in letters, those who teach us 
through means of beauty have always left a 
trace of sorrow in their work, which else had 
been hardly human. They have felt, perhaps, 
the sublime faith which is unperturbed in 
the face of the enormous riddle; they have 
been sure of the ultimate triumph of reason, 
of beauty, of goodness; but they have been 
aware, also, of the terribleness of actual ugli- 
ness and evil. And through their admonitions 
to gladness, their helpful assurances to bra- 
very and effort, there has always sounded the 
undernote of human pathos — the ground 
tone of mortality. 

128 



sue Note of mnnntnu 

These are the great ones, these are the mas- 
ters, these are they to whom we must turn for 
consolation and counsel. They have known 
and suffered life even as ourselves, and yet 
they have been able to endure and to smile. 
Their dicta about life, therefore, are infinitely 
valuable in this difficult task of living. And 
I think it behooves us, in however small a way 
we may be called on to serve the world in 
art, to follow so far as we can their splendid 
examples of gladness and courage. Let the 
burden of sadness be what it may, let the final 
solution seem never so impossible, let our 
spirits be submerged in all but utter despair, 
there yet remains the obligation which none 
may escape, — to bear witness to a still more 
universal truth, to testify to a gladness in life 
underlying all our sorrows. We may not be 
able to hold it, or call it ours, or give expres- 
sion to any of its phases ; our own destiny may 
preclude that; none the less must we acknowl- 
edge its overlordship, and admit that doubt 
and sorrow are merely of the moment. 

129 



Sanity ants ^tt 



A FRIEND of mine, a man of far more than 
ordinary culture and depth of thought, said to 
me recently that he didn't believe the healthy 
normal man would write poetry; that in 
health the strong rational human being is so 
happy that he does not need to find expres- 
sion in any of the fine arts; to be alive and 
to do some useful necessary work is enough 
for him. And Stevenson, somewhere, I think 
in one of his letters, throws out the hint that 
possibly art, after all, may be the result of a 
diseased condition. 

Naturally every follower of the fine arts 
will be up in arms at such a suggestion. He 
will repudiate the idea of anything abnormal 
or less than manly in the occupation he loves 
so well. The imputation of insanity attach- 
ing to genius is one that has gained some cre- 

130 



San(t» antr att 

dence through Lombroso and Nordau, and 
has ranged the world of thinking people into 
two camps. Probably the truth lies midway 
between them. 

For, in the first place, it would seem that 
both Lombroso and Nordau are extremists, 
and very often the simplest aspects of a case 
are contorted in support of their own view. 
They themselves are not quite balanced; their 
single idea has run away with them. But let 
us ask what are the aims of writing and the 
fine arts, and what are the conditions under 
which they are produced. 

Roughly speaking, the aim and business 
of the fine arts is to represent life. Not 
merely to reproduce the most exact image or 
picture of life, but to reproduce it with some- 
thing added. That something is the personal 
quality of the artist himself, his thoughts and 
feelings about life. If, then, we consider the 
whole body of art, all the product of the lit- 
eratures and fine arts of all peoples, we may 
say that it is a very fair representation of life, 

131 



8rj|t iFttenJrsJjtii of art 

and in every case a fair representation or rev- 
elation of the different races as well. Not 
only will each nation record the life of the 
world as it existed then and there; it will 
also reveal its own bias of judgment and emo- 
tion about that life. Also the art of a nation 
will fail here and there, just as life fails ; but 
in the long run it will not fail ; it will form 
a faithful counterpart and picture, so far as 
it goes, of the life of that nation. 

Now the question arises. How can anything 
so trustworthy be the product of insanity? 
Sanity surely implies a capacity for seeing 
things as they are, and if art is born of insane 
conditions, it must in the long run represent 
things as they are not. If the fine arts are the 
product of insanity, then truly is man follow- 
ing a vain shadow. 

For the fine arts have always embodied for 
men, not only reflections about life, but aspira- 
tions and ideals. Art has held the mirror up 
to nature; but it has always been a magic 
mirror, a mirror of the artist's own make, in 

132 



which we might behold the world truly and 
accurately, but with a certain glamour or 
bloom added. It has shown us very truly 
what life is, but it has also shown us what 
life might become. There has ever been a 
prophetic quality in art. It has always been 
able to foreshadow standards of conduct and 
culture; and civilizations have always tended 
to make themselves over, to grow and develop, 
on the lines of progress laid down by their 
poets, seers, and artists. How, then, can we 
possibly admit that art is sprung from insan- 
ity? Would it not be nearer the truth to say 
that art is one of the most sane and normal 
things in the world? 

This being so, if it be so, what excuse have 
we for saying that genius is touched with in- 
sanity; that the artist is never quite a normal 
being; or that art is the product of disease, 
and the healthy man would, after all, never 
wish to write or paint or make music? Can 
there be the least foundation for such a con- 
clusion? 

133 



I believe there is art which is bom of un- 
wholesome conditions; and I believe there 
is writing which is certainly not the product 
of perfect sanity; but I do not believe that 
the best writing and the best art are so pro- 
duced. Any of the arts requires in those who 
profess it an amount of technical skill which 
is very exacting. Naturally, therefore, all art, 
or at least every fine art, very easily tends to 
specialization. 

In primitive and simple times the fine arts 
would not be so far divorced from common 
life as they are now. Being in the first place 
merely means of expressing universal sorrow 
or joy, love or hate, hope or fear, they would 
be used by every one. But gradually, as one 
or another individual in a community gained 
facility and power and unusual excellence as 
a poet or a musician, he would devote himself 
exclusively to that fascinating pursuit. And 
so well was he esteemed, that, like our friend 
Ung in the ballad, he need do nothing but 
make songs and music. He need share no 

134 



Sanitff utitt art 

longer in ' the most ordinary and necessary 
work of the world. Now there is, of course, 
in such specialization an element of danger. 
The man highly specialized is a variant, not 
a normal type. We should logically con- 
clude, then, that the artist or the writer who 
is too exclusively engrossed in his art is not 
the person from whom the best work is to be 
expected. His art may be so overladen with 
technique that the great human emotions may 
be lost. The man has been swallowed up in 
the artist. 

I believe a critical consideration of art and 
letters, with this point in view, would bear 
out the conclusion. We should find that the 
great works of art and literature, the works 
which the world has cared to preserve with 
loving gratitude, have been produced by men 
whose interest in life was greater than their 
interest in their art. They were men first and 
artists afterward. Technically speaking, there 
have been many English poets far superior 
to Shakespeare. 

135 



The truth is, therefore, that art is not the 
product of a diseased condition in the indi- 
vidual, but rather the product of great sanity 
and normal health ; at the same time the over- 
zealous and ill-regulated devotee of art may 
very easily run himself into an abnormal state 
bordering on disease. 

There is in all this, if I am not mistaken, 
a wholesome case of instruction for the artist, 
and a very palpable warning against over- 
exclusive devotion to a single line of develop- 
ment. It is so easy in an enthusiasm for art to 
be careless about all else; so easy to neglect 
a due culture of all our powers; so easy to 
push our development in a single direction 
until we lose poise and become warped and 
distorted through specialization. A great 
care for our art, yes; but an exclusive and 
slavish devotion to it, by no means! The man 
must be greater than the artist; and when this 
is not so, only a second-rate art can be the 
result. So that if you are a writer or a painter 
or make music your mistress, it is of the ut- 

136 



Sanitff unXf art 

most importance that you should be something 
of an athlete and a philosopher as well. For 
the art of a people must provide the moral 
aims and aesthetic ideals for that people; it 
must, therefore, be the product of the very 
best spirits and minds of the race. 

Upon no other class in a community, then, 
does the obligation of noble living rest v^ith 
so unremitting a strain as on its artists, its 
writers and painters, its architects and music- 
makers. Only great sanity can give birth to 
great art. Sanity of mind, sweetness of tem- 
per, strength of physique ; an insatiable curi- 
osity for the truth at all costs; an unswerving 
loyalty to manly goodness in the face of all 
difficulties ; and an unashamed love of beauty 
in every guise; these are some of the prime 
qualities which go to make an artist. 

It alm.ost seems that to be an artist one must 
first attain a perfect personality. That is diffi- 
cult. But then art is a difficult matter; it 
is nothing less than the embodiment of perfec- 
tion. 

137 



€i)e €tmtiH Spirit 



It is not only in letters and the arts that 
we must look for manifestations of the crea- 
tive spirit, but in the more usual activities of 
life as v^ell. Otherwise we are in danger of 
misconceiving the character of literature, and 
making the arts seem hardly an essential fea- 
ture of our civilization. If we would have 
the arts to flourish, we must insist on recog- 
nizing their inherent vitality in the common 
life of the nation. If we would make litera- 
ture that shall be worthy of the name, we must 
ourselves be convinced that it is something 
more than an artificial amusement with no 
real hold on the heart of a people. 

The creative spirit appears not less in life 

138 



than in letters. Indeed it appears a hundred 
times more actively and easily there; for our 
national life at the beginning of this twentieth 
century, be it what it may, is nothing but the 
result of that spirit working in the channel 
most natural to it. In our time and generation 
the channel through which the creative spirit 
most readily finds vent is the practical one, 
the industrial and commercial one. It is true 
the creative spirit has always found these dif- 
ferent avenues for itself, through which it 
would attempt to reach perfection and com- 
pletely realize its ideal. The Time Spirit is 
the creative spirit, and as it moves through 
the ages it accomplishes itself in various ways, 
producing not the beauties of the arts alone, 
but the multitudinous revelations of common 

life as well. 

It is through the creative spirit that we 
know ourselves a part of that which is abid- 
ing in the universe, which underlies the eter- 
nal fluidity of change, and for ever repeats 
itself in the guise of myriad forms. In the 

139 



early spring flowers, in the luxuriance of har- 
vest, in the reddening fruits of autumn, in the 
leaves of the pine, in the flux of the laborious 
tide, in the floating mist over the mountain 
crest, the creative spirit lives and moves and 
has its being — as in the doubting, hoping, 
eager, unaging heart of man. No small por- 
tion of our sympathy with nature is no doubt 
an instinctive recognition of this power in 
ourselves, this capacity for creation. As the 
beliefs of an older pantheism peopled groves 
and trees and rivers, each with its own divin- 
ity, so our latest convictions endow the uni- 
verse with a single personality revealed in 
innumerable modes and aspects. Whether the 
divine activity finds vent for itself through 
the right hand of a painter, or in the unfold- 
ing of a fern, is a difiFerence of circumstance 
— not a difference of power. In each in- 
stance the creative spirit is seeking fulfilment. 
Both in art and in nature the conditions un- 
der which the creative spirit works are the 
same; the laws through which alone it can 

140 



JKfje ettatWe Spirit 

operate are in their foundations the same. 
Man, the workman in the world, is a pygmy 
creator. It matters not at all whether he 
draws or digs or makes music or builds ships, 
in the work of his hands is the delight of his 
heart, and in that joy of his heart lurks his 
kinship with his own Creator, from whom, 
through the obedient will and plastic hand 
of the artist, all art and beauty are derived. 

The condition under which creation takes 
place is invariably threefold; for the simple 
reason that the creature represents the creator, 
and the creator himself is characterized by a 
threefold nature. 

The universe presents itself to us as poten- 
tially beautiful, or moral, or true, according 
to our point of appreciation. Considered 
merely in the light of reason, things are either 
true or false; judged by the heart, we think 
them goodly or evil; while to our senses they 
appear either fair or ugly. If we are thus 
aware of the world about us, much more 
keenly are we aware of a similar threefold 

141 



8P&e iFtienlTfiii&iji of Mvt 

consciousness within ourselves. So the deed 
partakes of the doer, the work of the worker, 
the thought of the thinker. It is no empty 
metaphor to say of a work of art that it lacks 
soul ; since the thing may indeed be wanting 
in that direction, just as it may be insuffi- 
ciently supplied with charm or with reason- 
ableness ; and all three qualities are essentially 
requisite. Only when they coexist in nearly 
equal proportion is perfection, or anything 
approaching perfection, possible in a work of 
art. 

The good artist comes to his work equipped 
with an unusual delicacy of the senses, so that 
he is alive to every shade of beauty in the 
outward world. He comes to his work with 
an unusual depth of feeling, too — with an 
intense emotional nature, capable of great 
sympathy, great loving-kindness, and great 
force of character. And lastly, he comes to 
his work with a keen understanding of life 
and nature, and a breadth of intellectual cul- 
ture beyond that of most men. With a per- 

142 



sonality naturally well balanced in these three 
ways, and thoroughly cultivated by careful 
attention to each aspect of his character, he 
is ready to receive the inspiration of the 
Spirit which brooded upon the face of the 
waters, and to hear the Word which v^as in 
the beginning. 

Not otherwise, for all our striving, can the 
greatest work be accomplished ; and even the 
humblest result of the unknown craftsman, 
wherever a trace of excellence exists, shows 
some evidence of this, poise of powers, this 
divine triplicate balance of forces. 

The artist is enamoured of life, absorbed 
in its colour, its variety, its drenching beauty; 
and always a love of life, a love of nature, a 
love of his fellows, gives him elation, happi- 
ness, and courage; while at the same time he 
is capable of sitting unmoved in meditation 
before the passing spectacle of existence, and 
observing it in the v^hite cold light of science. 
Unflinching logic, unbounded love, unmiti- 
gated delight, any one of which in excess 

143 



8Ciie Jpvitntfnftip of ^vt 

alone would quickly work the ruin of a per- 
sonality, will, when duly balanced in one for- 
tunate person, operate together for the hap- 
piest issue of that life. Only from such an 
individuality may we expect significant and 
enduring achievement in art. 

From such considerations a scheme of edu- 
cation for the artist is easily deducible. And 
since he is only the normal man seeking an 
outlet for activity in one direction rather than 
in another, we gain at the same time a useful 
criterion for education in general. It is not 
enough that the artist should be trained in 
technique; that is the least of his require- 
ments. We must ensure him the sound mind 
in the sound body, and, one may add, the 
loving heart as well. He must be made 
strong, agile, deft, alert, sensible to impres- 
sions ; he must be given the open mind which 
loves lucidity; he must be imbued with the 
sweetness of temper, gracious as the morning 
yet perdurable as the hills. 

To such a man the work of his own hands 
144 



is a constant pleasure; his passage through 
the world an entrancing revelation; and his 
comradeship with men and women an un- 
tarnished happiness. 



145 



€J)e €MtBA Spirit 



We are apt to think of criticism as some- 
thing very unimportant, and to offer it the 
merest tolerance as the pastime of leisurely 
scholars and visionaries, with no bearing on 
daily life. But the power of the press is very 
largely a critical power, wielding a direct 
influence on all our undertakings in art, in 
politics, in religion, in afifairs. And this con- 
sideration alone should convince us that criti- 
cism comes within the range of what we call 
practical concerns. 

Criticism resembles original creation in 
that it has both a scientific and an artistic side. 
It is scientific so far as it has to do with the 
analysis of phenomena, the collecting and 
arrangement of data, the discovery and eluci- 

146 



CJ)e erttical SjiCttt 

dation of principles, and the exposition of the 
natural laws of art. It is artistic, in that its 
purpose is to offer its conclusion to the student 
with as much convincing grace and polish as 
may be. It is not merely the part of criti- 
cism to investigate the achievements of art, 
and to record the result of those investiga- 
tions in a bare tabulation of fact; it is equally 
its business, surely, to win men to an alle- 
giance to the beautiful, to direct them courte- 
ously. It is not enough that we should be 
brought face to face with all the best inter- 
pretations of nature and humanity. It is 
needful that they be made clear, convincing, 
luminous, intelligible. 

This is very nearly the service art renders 
us with respect to life and nature. That fa- 
mous saying of Arnold's, " Poetry is a criti- 
cism of life," is a concise statement of the 
same idea. It was never intended, I take it, 
for a definition of poetry, yet it expresses very 
aptly one aspect and function of all art. And 
this, without in the least implying anything 

147 



like didacticism, or the dreary obligations of 
a so-called moral purpose. Even the most 
faithful reproductions of realism are hardly 
impersonal utterances. They cannot but be- 
tray the critical standpoint of their author, 
however dispassionate he may be. If they are 
revolting and painful in their bleak veracity, 
they speak, perhaps, for his pious indignation 
at some hideous wrong, some social injustice, 
some piteous tragedy of existence; and we 
may go our ways, the better for his whole- 
some though disagreeable lesson. If they are 
engrossed, even to the point of tediousness, 
with the familiar, the common, or the dull, 
unrelieved by any spice of romance, unheight- 
ened by any touch of extraneous beauty, they 
are still, it may be, so many expressions of a 
serene and humane personality, perceiving 
good everywhere and implicitly declaring the 
worth of life. Let him be as literal, as un- 
compromising, as he will, his temperament 
and philosophy are still inevitably revealed 
on every page. Not a word is traced on 

148 



paper, not a colour laid to canvas, but carries 
some hint of the delineator's hand. The 
artist's identity is patent in his work, his ac- 
cent lurks in every line, his features look from 
every phrase. And at the last, v^hether he 
intend it or not, his collected v^ork v^ill form 
a commentary, or at least a foot-note, to the 
great book of nature. 

There it lies, this green volume of the earth, 
the dark sea on one page, the dark forested 
hills on the other, and the creamy margin of 
shore between, with a ribbon of surf to mark 
the place. And there you may read to your 
heart's content; the story will never be fin- 
ished, nor the interest flag, till you drop the 
task some night for very weariness, and your 
candle goes out with a puff of wind. But 
while the brief light lasts, and your strength 
holds out, how enthralling a book it is. What 
legendry and science, what song and story. 
The obscure records of the mountains and the 
tides, the shifting pictures of clouds and ruf- 
fling forests and changing fields from year 

149 



to year; the multitudes of the living trees 
and grasses, and last, most wonderful of all, 
the perishable talking tribes of men. And 
then to think, before this volume how many 
students have sat and mused, pondering the 
meaning of its fair text — so fair, yet so ob- 
scure as well. Here Shakespeare read and 
smiled; here Homer and Horace looked and 
doubted; here Job and Plato, David and 
Dante, Angelo and Darwin, Virgil and Vol- 
taire, Spinoza and Rubens and Cervantes, 
found lifelong solace mingled w^ith disquiet. 
Scholars and saints, painters and ploughmen, 
lovers and skeptics, emperors and peasants, 
and poets and kings; and what had they all 
to say about their reading? No comment? 
Did they find the work amusing, or was it 
squalid, or only dull? Think of the poetry 
of Emerson and Wordsworth ; what is it but 
a critical interpretation of nature? Think of 
the work of Fielding or Thackeray or Haw- 
thorne ; what was it but a running commen- 
tary on humanity? 

150 



a:j|e ertitical Sflirtt 

There is one sense in which all the arts are 
one — in that they are all but differing forms 
of expression, differing methods in which the 
spirit of humanity finds a voice and embodies 
its thought about the universe, and in that 
sense, surely, all art is an appendix to nature, 
a criticism on experience. Fiction and paint- 
ing, for example, seem clearly to have had 
their origin as simple pastimes, yet how sig- 
nificant a body of commentary they contain. 
I suppose the art of painting arose in the 
idlest hour, from a very superfluity of leisure 
and fancy, the chance discovery of some 
dreamy bygone summer afternoon; yet every 
line or shade tells tales of the vanished paint- 
er's sentiment as he looked out at the w^orld 
about him. And modern fiction; there is a 
fine art which would seem to have had its 
beginning in nothing more serious than the 
telling of tales over a winter fire. Yet now, 
in all its varied complexity, so philosophical, 
so intentional, how evidently critical it has 
become. 



We must not forget, either, to make ample 
allowance for that conception of art which 
claims for it a province quite apart from the 
actual world. According to this view, it is 
the business of art to create for our enjoyment 
a fictitious universe, within our own, yet dis- 
severed from it — an unreal, imaginary pal- 
ace of pleasure, having no bearing upon 
actual life. This was the dream of the pre- 
Raphaelites. For them the fairy-tale was the 
true model of fiction. They revelled in crea- 
tions that leave nature toiling far behind. 
You would certainly never go to them for a 
criticism of life. And yet what does the pres- 
ence of such a fanciful creation mean — 
springing up side by side with the actual, and 
resembling it so little? Is not its mere exist- 
ence a most significant comment on the world 
of fact it pretends to ignore? Is it not an 
avowal of the insufficiency of nature, the im- 
perfection of our lot? It is easy to scoff at 
such fantastic wistfulness in art, but for my 



152 



ffifie ©titical Spirit 

part I think it more profitable than a com- 
placent abiding in *^ things as they are." 

If you consider the attitude of the artist, 
the painter, the poet, the man of letters, as 
an attentive observer of things about him, as 
a portrayer of natural phenomena, a reporter 
at large in all the splendid, bright avenues 
of the earth, bringing home to the attention 
of his fellows many facts from many sources, 
adding some hint of his own thoughts con- 
cerning them, elucidating them from his 
fuller knowledge than ours, suggesting by 
his chosen preference which seem to him 
most memorable and noteworthy, you will 
be reminded of the attitude of the critic, and 
see how closely they resemble each other. 
Admitting this similarity of functions, what 
are those qualifications of the creative artist 
which are requisite to the right critical tem- 
per as well? 

First of all, I should place openness of 
mind. One would think that a very obvious 
requirement, the least that could be asked of 

153 



8CJie ffvitvcan^ip of ^vt 

a personality bringing itself under the spell 
of new forms and fresh influences of beauty. 
But how rare it is, that spiritual candour 
which shows itself in the utterly unpreju- 
diced disposition of a great, patient humility. 
It is linked on one side to the religious sense, 
the capacity for wonder, and on the other to 
a profound curiosity that is for ever questing, 
questing, questing — the scholar's gift. It in- 
volves a love of truth, too, undauntable and 
unswerving, ready on the instant to abandon 
the most cherished notion for the sake of one 
more tenable in reason. With an exquisite 
susceptibility to impressions, and with a depth 
of feeling rather than conviction, the artist 
steeps himself in the atmosphere of every 
scene he would reproduce, the critic surren- 
ders himself to the subtlest influences of the 
masterpiece under his hand. In either case, 
it is a finely sensitized mechanism, as delicate 
as a piece of litmus paper played upon by 
the potent element of beauty in the chemistry 
of the soul, and bearing unimpeachable evi- 

154 



dence of the test. Such a being is in little 
danger of coming to destruction through the 
self-confidence of the prig. He is more likely 
to be the most una3suming of mortals. There 
will characterize him a sweet eagerness for 
knowledge, not incompatible with a gentle 
regard for beliefs no longer possible and con- 
ceptions no longer true. He, too, will be quite 
willing to pass with the slow procession of 
created things from one illusion to another, 
without dejection or regret. None will be 
more passionately and keenly alive to events 
than he; no one more detached in contem- 
plating them. A sedulous, kindly nature, 
earth-born and instinctive, will be his; so 
that, while he is almost strenuous in following 
a bent, he will completely realize the futility 
of insistence and the folly of overstrain. 
Such a mind will not be affluent nor impres- 
sive, but it will be infinitely exact in its own 
way, infinitely careful of distinctions, infi- 
nitely scrupulous in speech. To the sobriety 
of science it would add the elation of art; 

155 



^f^t j^vittOiuftlp ot art 

and to the elation of art it would add the 
smiling afterthought of indecision. 

That a painter, or a writer, or an artist of 
any sort must be receptive, seems almost self- 
evident. It is his business to be sensitive, to 
keep on the alert for all passing phenomena 
of beauty, all the suggestive incidents of life. 
Not a line or a gesture must escape him of the 
manifold human drama daily enacted before 
his eyes; not a shade or tone of colour must 
be lost on him of all the wonderful fleeting 
loveliness of sky and sea, mountain and cloud, 
sun and rain. The changing face of the uni- 
verse is his continual study, and his appre- 
ciation will never fail to catch the gusts of 
passion and mood that sweep across the tu- 
multuous regions of the mind. Whatever else 
he may be, he can never for one moment be 
fixed or stable, save in the purpose to be always 
free, always unprejudiced, always ready for 
the new impulse, the new impression, the new 
inspiration. For whether we think of inspira- 
tion as coming through experience or through 

156 



intuition, it demands an equally receptive 
habit of thought. And one who would be 
guided by it must have an equally sedulous 
regard for the inward meaning and the out- 
ward apparition of things. He must be en- 
dowed with senses of no ordinary keenness, 
like that figure in Norse mythology who 
could hear the grasses growing; and a very 
wizardry of instinctive comprehension must 
be his. Culture for him will mean not so 
much self-perfection as self-absorption in na- 
ture and life for others, and at the instance 
of an uncontrollable propensity. He is the 
unwearied listener at the Sphinx, the eternal 
wanderer by all trodden and unfrequented 
paths; he is a nomad in the blood, and an 
incredulous believer from his birth. And 
this natural aptitude for indecision and ap- 
preciation is emphasized by a daily use, is 
encouraged and developed and grows by 
practice, until your typical artistic tempera- 
ment, as the phrase runs, becomes proverbi- 
ally impressionable and fastidious. 

157 



JSCfl^ iFtrttntrsiilii of art 

And all this, that he may convey some ex- 
pression of his new knowledge to the audi- 
ence of his fellows. He is eyes and ears for 
multitudes less fortunate than himself. We 
rely on him for daily fresh reports from every 
corner of the house of life, with all its won- 
derful galleries and crannies, crowded with 
fact and haunted by illusion. But what is 
our attitude toward him? Many of those 
traits which are most useful to the artist are 
most useful to the critic as well. Flexibility 
or openness of mind is one of them, and the 
most important. If the artist must exercise 
absolute freedom in his art, are we ready to 
grant him that right? Do we look with tol- 
erance on the new and strange in art? If we 
were to approach a new book or a new pic- 
ture with anything of the same receptiveness 
which the writer or the painter felt in dealing 
with his subject, we should, first of all, be 
attentive, curious, impressionable. We cer- 
tainly should not be carping and antagonistic. 
Our first effort would be to understand. We 

158 



Zfit ©ritfcail Sjitttt 

should apply thought to our subject, and not 
prejudice. 

While the creative spirit may be carried 
away by zeal in a cause, the critical spirit 
must always remain impartial. They are 
alike, however, in this, that to reach their 
best they must always be unhampered and 
individual. The critical spirit can espouse 
no party, adhere to no preconceived notion 
of the truth. Its only principle is a love of 
truth, of beauty, and of goodness, wherever 
they may be revealed, and in whatever guise 
they may appear. It must stand apart, with- 
out creed or predilection. The academic 
point of view, so valuable for the conservation 
of learning, is cut of court in critical affairs; 
since the gist of art is revelation, the accom- 
plishment of something unprecedented. The 
underlying science of art is as fixed and stable 
as all other natural law; but the manifesta- 
tions of art are always surprising, often in 
seeming contradiction to all tradition. So 
that the purely scholastic mode of appreciat- 

159 



^flt iFvlfnlrsijtii of art 

ing them is inadequate. To set up standards 
of bygone excellence in art and then bring 
all new achievements into comparison with 
them is unjust to both. You pin your faith 
to Dante and Shakespeare and Milton and 
Wordsworth, let us say, and then you bring 
a new book to be tested by their standard. 
If it does not conform, you say it must be 
poor. But, if it did conform, art would be 
a dead thing. Art and poetry are not inven- 
tions, they are living and vital forces, grow- 
ing with civilization, and making themselves 
felt in fresh ways every day. So that it is 
impossible, as it seems to me, to confront them 
with any preconceived notion of what they 
ought to be. It is only possible to criticize 
them in a spirit of absolute impartiality, with 
the unbiassed loving patience of the scientist. 



1 60 



grj)e Man ISej)mtr ti)e 
ISoofe 



Criticism after all is little more than dis- 
covery. It is like science in that. Their main 
business is to find the- truth. To science the 
multiform world of appearances is a complex, 
fascinating, and inexplicable creation, with 
something behind it, — purpose, reason, 
jnind, — which science seeks to understand. 
To criticism the world of art and literature 
is just a mimic creation, the work of cunning 
hands of many ages, a contrivance of human 
intelligence, behind which lurks and hides the 
immortal spirit of man. 

The scientist or philosopher, with an un- 
flinching and unquenchable curiosity, asks of 

i6i 



8C|ie JFvltnTfu'^lp of ^tt 

the universe, " Who goes there behind the 
shadowy substance? What Presence inhabits 
these fleeting forms, which make the lovely 
earth? Where dwells the Eternal, and what 
like is the Unchanging, if any Unchanging 
or Eternal there be?" In his smaller way 
the critic stands before a work of art, inquir- 
ing in like spirit, " What manner of man was 
behind this thing? What soul found vent in 
this shape of beauty? What comprehending 
being lent a passing permanence to its own 
aspirations in this scrap of art? " 

The answer to the critic is never easy. The 
answer to the scientist will perhaps never be 
possible. Yet something of the seriousness of 
philosophic science should always invest the 
business of criticism. Discovery, exposition, 
revelation, — that is the task of the critic. To 
find the man behind the book, the man behind 
the painting, the man behind the music, to 
understand him with sympathy and intelli- 
gence and respect; that is the first duty of 
criticism. And its second duty is to help oth- 

162 



crs to understand him. These two aims of 
criticism imply a patience, an indulgence, and 
a modest regard for others, not always found 
in the critic as he is. They would make him 
think of his artist first of all, of the public 
next, and last of himself, with his own pet 
theories and aversions. Unhappily it is com- 
mon to invert this order of procedure, and 
the critic is so engrossed with exhibiting his 
own cleverness that the true subject of his 
exposition is quite eclipsed. Criticism is a 
fine art, of course; and as such it very prop- 
erly embodies the personal bias of the critic. 
As a science, however, its prime regard must 
be for its subject. 

The man behind the book is not easy to 
discover. To meet the author, to dine with 
him, to receive his autograph, to photograph 
him carefully posed in his workshop, to note 
the style of his collar, the set of his coat, this 
is not to know the man behind the book. 
These things only give us a glimpse of a 
human being embarrassed by publicity and 

163 



©lie jFrfenirsUfti of ^rt 

shrinking from unwarranted scrutiny. Any 
real knowledge of the man behind the book 
is much more difficult and requires a proce- 
dure much more subtle, and is apt to come 
casually at unexpected moments. For it is 
not merely the man apart from his work we 
wish to know. Having created anything in 
art, the creator is no longer the same; some 
part of him has gone into the making of his 
work; a large part of his real self is there, 
his deepest convictions, his sincerest purpose, 
his finest taste. It is this underlying person- 
ality which is so interesting and so profitable 
an object of study. How the world impressed 
him, with what fortitude or timorousness he 
fronted life, what mark sorrow left upon him, 
how grateful he was for joy, where he failed 
and where he was strong, and whether his 
ideals, if made practical and put into effect, 
would help or hinder us in the difficult busi- 
ness of living. In short, the object of criti- 
cism is to know the man, just as his object as 
an artist was to make himself known. Not 

164 



the mere making of himself known to fame, 
but the making of himself known in his work, 
in the adequate expression of himself, — this 
is the ambition of the artist. If the passion 
for creation is in him, it will not concern him 
much vv^hether men recognize him widely or 
not; his chief anxiety will be to reveal his 
finer inner self in his art, whatever that may 
be ; and none will be so conscious as himself 
of any shortcoming or failure in that delicate, 
almost impossible, achievement. 

Every great writer is a friend of all the 
world, one whom we may come to know, who 
can aid us with solace and counsel and enter- 
tainment. In his books he has revealed him- 
self, and in them we make his acquaintance. 
This is the purpose of serious reading. Not 
merely to be delighted with beauty of style; 
not merely to be informed and made wise; 
not merely to be encouraged and ennobled in 
spirit; but to receive an impetus in all these 
directions. Such is the object of culture. To 
know a good book is to know a good man. 

165 



^ttt iffvimnnf^ip of art 

To be influenced by a trivial, or ignoble, or 
false book, is to associate with an unworthy 
companion, and to suffer the inevitable detri- 
ment. For the book, like the man, must be 
so true that it convinces our reason and sat- 
isfies our curiosity; it must be so beautiful 
that it fascinates and delights our taste; it 
must be so spirited and right-minded that it 
enlists our best sympathy and stirs our more 
humane emotions. A good book, like a good 
comrade, is one that leaves us happier or bet- 
ter off in any way for having known it. A 
bad book is one that leaves us the poorer, 
either by confusing our reason with what is 
not true, or by debasing our taste with what 
is ugly, or by offending our spirit with what 
is evil. For a book must always appeal to us 
in these three ways, and be judged by these 
three tests. 

Then, too, it is only the man behind the 
book that makes the book worth reading. 
And what worthless things often masquerade 
under that noble nam.e ! Factory-made abom- 

i66 



inations of cloth and paper, without a shadow 
of soul or sincerity in them from beginning 
to end! You perceive at once that the author 
(Heaven forgive him!) went about to make 
a contrivance which should fool the guileless 
public, a book in nothing but appearance, a 
conscious cheat. The real book has vitality, 
it convinces and moves and entrances us by 
its indubitable veracity. Its maker was not 
concerned to produce an effect, but to free 
his mind and give vent to his feeling. In- 
evitably the result of his effort bears the stamp 
of his own personality. • The book is the living 
image of the man. That is why real books 
have a power over us. It is the individuality 
that counts. And wherever there is a false 
note, something that the writer did not truly 
believe and intimately feel, be sure the reader 
will be aware of the discrepancy, and the book 
will fail to seem natural — it will not be 
*^ convincing," as we say in the jargon of the 
studios. On the other hand, let a book be 
never so crude and ill written, if the writer 

167 



was in earnest and put his heart and mind 
into the work, that book will have merit and 
some quality at least of an actual creation. 
It will have had a creator behind it — a veri- 
table maker, not a mere manipulator; and 
the vitality it received from him it will in 
turn impart to others. This is the true life 
of a book, without which the making of vol- 
umes becomes a contemptible trade, and lit- 
erature a lost art. 



1 68 



Cj)c IWiflmtorg iWooi 



Perhaps our keenest impulses, our joys and 
hopes and depressions, spring from tides of 
influence beyond our own control. And we 
are not altogether to be held responsible for 
moods. More impalpable than the shadows 
of flying clouds, our moods sweep over us, 
changing the complexion of day, moving us 
to elation or sadness. The folly and utter 
inconsequence of moods would seem to prove 

this. 

Whatever the origin of our moods, cer- 
tainly some of them may clearly be thought 
to spring from primitive ancestral, almost 
cosmic, trends of inheritance, and the habits 
of old generations on the earth. So that many 

169 



JETfie jfxitnXinffip of ^tt 

causes we do not take note of are concerned 
in making our happiness. 

With the vernal change of the year comes 
our immemorial migratory mood, noted long 
ago so beautifully by Chaucer in the opening 
of the Tales, with its description of April, 
when the pilgrim spirit is abroad. Long 
before that delightful cavalcade set out for 
Canterbury, folk had become wanderers and 
incipient vagabonds in spring; and the old 
poet's picture is as fresh and true for this day 
as it was half a thousand years ago. And 
perhaps we know the zest of spring even more 
keenly than our fathers, as we need its refresh- 
ment the more. To really know the rapture 
of April, however, one must have lived a 
winter in the frozen north, where cold shuts 
down like an iron lid in November and is 
never once unlocked until mid-ApriL Then, 
indeed, the warm spring days return to these 
austere hyperborean regions with a radiance 
unknown to other zones, and their May-time 
is like relief to a beleaguered city. Fancy for 

170 



yourself the joy of feeling firm brown earth 
underfoot after treading the yielding snow 
for six months together! If you have ever 
walked half a block through a sandy blizzard 
and then come suddenly upon the good pave- 
ment, you will have some notion of the mere 

bodily relief. 

But if there is so much pleasurable reliet 
in the mere passing of cold, what pure pleas- 
ure of spirit do we not share in the migratory 
season. Every unfolding leaf is an infection 
of joy; every wild bird-note has its answering 
reverberation in ourselves. Perhaps from our 
small brothers of the air we have inherited a 
touch of their genius for wandering, and 
from our dumb kindred of the forest some- 
thing of the power of perceptible growth. 
We, too, unfold in spring, put forth new 
capacities, and have stirrings for change of 
scene, for adventures. We feel dimly that we 
are truly inheritors of the kingdom of free- 
dom, not mere serfs of convention and town. 
This vague, subhuman, primitive longing 

171 



8C^t ;fftitt(if^fti9 of ^vt 

has its effect, no doubt, in our social customs, 
our homes and holiday resorts. And if we are 
growing more strenuous, we are growing 
more simple and natural as well. " The sea- 
son " in town grows shorter and shorter, the 
habit of a country holiday more universal. 
It is no longer considered smart to flock in 
huge, hideous hotels; the seclusion of some 
sleepy farmhouse in a nest of hills is the ap- 
proved thing, as it is really the better. 

The need we all have of just this migratory 
movement every year! If you note it, you 
will perceive the uncomfortable irritability 
of your friends in spring. They say they are 
out of sorts. But all they need is a little nat- 
ural existence, a cessation from artificial con- 
ditions. I read the other day what seemed 
to me a very clever bit of realism, a story 
called " Kate Wetherell." She was one of 
those slaves of the kitchen said to be common 
in New England; she became so discouraged 
that one night she attempted suicide by 
drowning. But a providential rope saved her 

172 



life, and the daring midnight venture re- 
sulted only in a thorough wetting. Kate went 
home walking on air, to her tiresome, dull 
husband and her round of pots. From that 
day she was a changed woman, with an un- 
quenchable seed of elation within her. 

Poor, driven human soul, how often you 
fancy that you want to pass from this bitter 
round of trial and toil, when in reality all 
you need is a bath and a sleep ! Take off those 
silly, cramping garments, that idiotic silk 
stock that deforms your neck, those Chinese 
shoes that deform your feet; get into some 
sensible flannels, and be away to the hills or 
the sea! If you would only follow your in- 
stinct occasionally, instead of making yourself 
the uncomfortable cipher of fashion and cus- 
tom! There is only one way in the world to 
be distinguished: Follow your instinct! Be 
yourself, and you'll be somebody. Be one 
more blind follower of the blind, and you will 
have the oblivion you deserve. Instincts were 
made to be heeded, not to be thwarted. Per- 

173 



sonality was made to be cherished, not to be 
annihilated. And it is right to want to move 
from the narrow and constricting to the broad 
and ennobling. You cannot go to the coun- 
try too soon this summer, nor stay too long. 
Let us give ample play to the migratory 
mood, believing it an inheritance from vaster 
times and a hint of unmeasured journeys yet 
to come. Let us become well accustomed to 
it, attaching ourselves not too firmly to one 
place, nor to one tenet, nor to one custom, 
however good. 



174 



©n Emtrition 



It is a wonderful June morning in a New 
England town. Long before breakfast-time 
the birds have waked you with their riotous 
medley of songs and calls. Probably it was 
the oriole in the orchard, talking away in his 
mellow syllables, who actually roused you to 
consciousness at last. Then you were glad 
to be awake, for you remembered you were 
not in the city any longer, and you gave a 
sigh of relief and stretched far down in the 
cool, clean linen. But the oriole sang on and 
the sun was high and the world was good to 
see, and you could lie no longer. Now it is 
after breakfast, and you stroll out on the lawn 
and see the flowers and clover and hear more 
birds and watch the people going to church. 

175 



2rJie iFttentrstifiJ of art 

There goes by a little lady in light gown, 
with her parasol and book, very content and 
happy, to rehearse her prayers and praises 
as her grandmother did before her. If you 
look with the artist's eye, if you can attain 
for a moment that magical vision which sees 
things not too near nor yet too far, which 
notes every detail and yet is detached from 
the object and views it as in a dream or a mov- 
ing picture, you will perceive that she is not 
as familiar as you fancied. In reality her 
dress and customs are as strange and foreign 
as if she were a little Jap or a Corean. Why 
does she trip away so lightly over the grass, 
why is she so assured in her happiness, why 
does she wear those needless gloves, that 
strange hat, those fluttering ribbons? I see 
her moving through the picture and ask my- 
self these things. Why? Tradition, I sup- 
pose. Slowly progressing tradition working 
for ages has brought about her dress as it is 
this morning, and made her set out for church 



176 



in that calm, delightful way. I don't know 
whether ladies go to church in Japan, or 
whether they have any Sunday. But, if they 
have and if they do, how charming we should 
think their custom! What a pious and beau- 
tiful habit! Yet it is only tradition. 

Is tradition, then, so great a beautifier of 
this world and of our life here? Is it not 
rather true to say that all our advances and 
advantages have been won in a hard-fought 
fight with tradition? Is it not by stubbornly 
opposing custom and by unflinchingly insist- 
ing on change, f reedorh, reform, that we have 
come to our present development? Am I 
not right to be a liberal, even a radical, and 
set my face like a stone against benumbing 
tradition? Tradition makes men bigots and 
slaves and tyrants and superstitious yokels. 
Tradition is the father of persecutions, the 
uncle of falsehoods, the brother of ignorance, 
and the grandsire of a thousand hideous sins 
against sweetness and light. I will have none 
of tradition. I will abide by the example of 

177 



my masters, those brave thinkers who tried 
to teach me liberality. Be others what they 
may, I will be myself. 

" Ah, my friend, that is all very fine," said 
a still, small voice, as I kept on the smooth, 
soft grass, " but look here, look about you. 
See those yellow lilies there beyond the tennis- 
court. All winter they were asleep in their 
bulbs, dry and brown, with not a soul to tend 
them. Yet this morning there they are, all 
radiance and light, the same frail, beautiful 
creatures their people have been for a thou- 
sand years. How do you fancy they manage 
to compass that miracle? Tradition. And 
you hear your orioles and your warblers and 
your robins, each keeping fresh and fair his 
own imperishable measure of gladness. 
There again is tradition. And just fancy for 
a moment, please, what would happen if your 
oriole should turn radical and attempt some 
new strange note, some violation of the tra- 
dition of his kind, or if the yellow lily should 
presume to disregard the traditions of her 

178 



folk! No more lovely lilies, no more entranc- 
ing orioles, as long as the world might last. 

" Why, my fanciful friend, the very frame 
of the universe is hung upon tradition. Tra- 
dition is the cement that holds the arches of 
the earth in place; the planets themselves are 
hung on that thread. Let it once break, and 
cosmos would fall about your ears. If every 
creature after its kind, and every herb and 
flower after their kind, yes, and every stone 
and metal after their kind, did not follow 
unquestioningly the immutable law of their 
activity, the tradition of their race, we could 
not exist a moment as we are. We should 
all be thrown into primal confusion once 
more. Tradition is the first letter in the 
alphabet of life." 

And I suppose this is so. Try as we may, 
few of us can roam very far from the central 
peg to which our own peculiar tradition has 
tied us. We fancy ourselves reformers and 
independents. Let others follow customs, we 
are in bond to no law but our instinct. We 

179 



a^!l^ iFtfentrfiiij(jj of ^tt 

shall act for ourselves, as we think best. We 
shall conform no more, be subservient to none. 
Let tradition be hanged, for w^e have a finer 
sanction for conduct within the heart. And 
so off we fly into quixotic reforms and a hun- 
dred mad schemes for rearranging the uni- 
verse in a day and house-cleaning the cosmos 
in a week. 

It cannot be done. Tradition is not the 
bugbear radicals would have us believe. It 
safeguards our existence against our own too 
rash folly. It keeps us from the ills of a too 
precipitate haste. There is a happy mean in 
conduct between radicalism and conserva- 
tism. I hear my friend on one side of the 
room howling at the " hide-bound conserva- 
tives.'^ I hear my friend on the other side 
muttering at the " blatant radicals." And I 
do sympathize with each. If there is one 
thing I detest as heartily as I do the stuffy, 
narrow-minded, intolerant, unprogressive, 
conservative, it is the flannel-mouthed agi- 
tator. The one is hopeless, the other is almost 

1 80 



worse; he is destructive. And yet it is to 
be noted tradition moves. It moves slowly, 
very slowly, but it does move. And tradition 
is, after all, no inhuman condition, but a 
habit in whic|i we are immemorially inured. 
Tradition changes, too ; it is changing every 
day, and it is we ourselves who change it. 
When we give our energy to the generous 
tasks of reform, I think perhaps we should 
do well to remember this: not to try to go 
too fast. At least we should let our knowl- 
edge of tradition reconcile us to the difficulty 
of progress. We should remember always 
that the most thorough method of reform is 
that which reforms tradition. It is not easy 
to destroy old traditions, but it is possible to 
infect them with ridicule so that they pres- 
ently die, tardily but surely. Then we must 
all the while be fostering new traditions in 
their place. People are not adapted as yet 
to a life without tradition. They are not wise 
enough, and they are too timid. Give them 
time. Meanwhile, supplant the old tradi- 

i8i 



tions with better ones. Be as thoroughgoing 
as you please, but do have some finesse. In 
order to weed your garden, it will not be 
necessary to root up everything that is green. 



182 



©etsonal U^fi^m 



There is a rhythm of poetry, and there is 
a rhythm of people. And these two rhythms 
are similar in their charm and power. 

By a rhythm of people I do not mean any 
magnetic or magic influence generated in con- 
gregations of individuals, but rather the 
rhythm peculiar to each individual. In this 
sense rhythm is an attribute of personality, 
and is manifested through the person in mo- 
tion and speech. Observe your friends and 
notice the rhythm peculiar to each; how one 
is slow and another quick, one deliberate and 
another hurried, one jerky and another grace- 
ful. I almost fancy, indeed, that you might 
find one was iambic and another trochaic in 
essential rhythm. Can you not think of the 

183 



ponderous character that moves step after 
step, word after word, with the emphasis 
always delayed until the second thought, the 
second look, the second movement, the sec- 
ond words? Dons and dowagers and police- 
men are always iambic in their rhythm. Re- 
call the rhythm of blank verse, the most com- 
mon iambic measure in English, in the lines: 

" So all day long the noise of battle rolled 
Among the mountains by the winter sea," 

and you will perceive at once how settled and 
prosperous and conservative it is, quite aris- 
tocratic and assured. On the other hand, to 
quote again from Tennyson, there is the line 
of excellent trochees: 

" In the spring a young man's fancy lightly turns to 
thoughts of love." 

How different from the iambics! How 
sprightly, tripping, gay, and emotional! The 
rhythm of a soubrette rather than a savant. 
Then, again, there is the slow, uncertain, me- 

184 



^tvuonul Mi)j?tfim 

andering rhythm of some large people who 
move like a hexameter: 

*' This is the forest primeval, the murmuring pines and 
the hemlocks." 

Undecided people are usually of this dac- 
tyllic measure; and it is a very dangerous 
one to handle. 

Again, persons are like poems in this, that 
it is possible to have a bad rhythm, though 
every rhythm is good in itself. We may, 
however, destroy our- rhythm or nullify its 
effect by misuse. If we are naturally iambic, 
we must be careful how we break into tro- 
chees; and, if we are trochaic, we must be- 
ware of lapsing into iambics. The result of 
a bad use of rhythms is always ludicrous. 
The strut of a bantam and the skip of an 
archbishop are incongruous, and, therefore, 
to be employed with discrimination. And 
with this provision any rhythm may be used 
at will with expressional power. The prime 
rule in the poetry of man is this : Stick to your 

185 



STiie JfvitrOiniilp of art 

own rhythm. And remember you cannot help 
using your own natural rhythm so long as you 
are simple and sincere. The moment you be- 
gin to pose, you will unconsciously use an- 
other rhythm, not your own; and every one 
will know it. Do not imagine for a moment 
that you can appear to be what you are not. 
You are betrayed in every gesture. Every 
syllable " gives you away." Occasionally a 
great genius may play a part which is not his 
own by nature; but in that case he passes 
by imagination into the new character, and 
actually is the person he plays. This is the 
genius of the actor, and it is the lack of just 
this power that is so apparent in the mediocre 
player. 

To live according to one's rhythm is the 
law of common sense and common honesty. 
It is the first requisite of sanity, too. And 
it is one of the greatest evils of modern life 
that it tends to throw us out of rhythm. We 
are nearly all hurried to a point of hysteria. 
It is not so much that we have more than 

1 86 



we can do, as that we allow the haste to get 
on our nerves. Without being aware of it 
in the least, we become distraught, inefficient, 
and flighty, simply through the hurry in 
which we live. You may deny it as you 
please, but noise and haste are maddening. 
Watch the average business man, fluttering 
about like an agitated hen. He is divorced 
from his natural, legitimate power, for he 
has lost his own rhythm. He does everything 
too quickly, and he does nothing well. If 
he would only take time to breathe and smile 
and hold up his chest, he would accomplish 
much more, and save his soul alive at the 
same time. To be in a hurry is sometimes 
necessary. In that case, you must be prepared 
with the natural celerity of lightning, prompt 
but poised. It is never necessary to scurry. 
And in order to maintain this deliberation, 
of course, we must never let events tread on 
our heels. We must never dawdle, never 
allow our rhythm to run more slowly than 
is natural. That is equally a fault. But, if 

187 



we always do things that are becoming to our 
personality in the rhythm that is our true ex- 
pression, neither breathless nor lagging, we 
shall accomplish more than we dreamed and 
we shall always have time to spare. We have 
all the time there is; and in that time every- 
thing can be done that ought to be done. It 
is merely a matter of balance, of adjustment, 
of rhythm, of keeping the soul at poise amid 
the forces of circumstance and will. If we 
miss that fine poise, we suffer, we feel the 
deterioration that comes of ineffectual effort, 
we have wasted our power, we have depleted 
our fund of inertia and initiative impulse, we 
have hindered the delicate rhythm of per- 
sonality. 

Does this seem fantastic and far-fetched? 
It is not really so. Perhaps it is a matter that 
will not bear discussion. It will bear experi- 
micnt, however. If you do not believe in a 
personal rhythm, it is only because you have 
never thought of it in so many words. If 
you consider it for a moment in the light of 

1 88 



personal Mftstftm 

your own experience, you will be convinced 
of its truth and power. 

There is in poetry a certain influence or 
power quite apart from its logical meaning. 
There resides in the lines a subtle force not 
given to prose. This is the genius of the 
measure making itself felt. In the same way 
our personality makes itself felt in all we do, 
through the influence of our peculiar rhythm. 
And we shall be wise to cultivate our own 
proper and peculiar measure of speech and 
movement. For there is surely a power given 
to each one of us, call it what you will, that is 
net expended in word or act, but exerts itself 
in the unconscious time of speech, in the un- 
conscious time of our deeds. And just as the 
measure of verse influences the hearer and 
serves to carry an impression from the poet, 
so our own rhythm affects all who come into 
contact with us in life. It is a form of power 
about which a materialistic age knows little, 
and therefore one the more to be cultivated 
and preserved. 

189 



CpJjememI 



The test by which we are accustomed to 
measure the value of any artistic creation is 
its ability to survive. Anything which is truly 
great in art, we say, will have in it such a 
power of appeal and charm for men that they 
will be very unwilling to let it die. It will 
be carefully preserved through the ages for 
the sake of its rare beauty. We are so fear- 
ful that its like may not be easily found again 
that we build great museums and libraries 
where it may be received and stored with 
other treasures of its kind. 

Now while this quality of permanency in 
art is a convenient measure of universal es- 
teem, it is in itself of no virtue whatever. We 
value our Virgil and our Greek sculpture, 
not for their age, but for their beauty. They 

190 



gather a certain interest and pathos in their 
very antiquity; they appeal to us by the force 
of lovely association; they are ripe and ven- 
erable. But these charms may often be in- 
herent in less admirable v^ork as well. As 
far as its antiquity appeals to us, a poor little 
coin from some buried city is almost as full 
of suggestion as the Venus of Milo herself. 
Whether a beautiful object is permanent or 
impermanent is of no account whatever in 
valuing its excellence as art. 

A statue may be more lovely in one material 
than in another; that will depend on the 
colour and texture of the material, not on its 
enduring quality. A figure in snow that 
would not outlive the hour might be just as 
lovely as one in marble. Beauty never per- 
ishes, indeed; but it endures by virtue of its 
essence and influence; it is not dependent on 
the permanence of gross matter for its immor- 
tality. That would be a precarious immortal- 
ity at best. Rather is the permanence of 
beauty typified in the frail perishable hue and 

191 



form of the flowers and ephemera, so slight, 
so easily destroyed, and yet as enduring in 
their species as the elephant or the yew. In 
every butterfly that floats down the summer 
breeze, you see the symbol of that ephemeral 
loveliness which it is art's ambition to em- 
body. In this ephemeral quality, acting and 
dancing are the two arts nearest to nature. 
They cannot be recorded, but perish as soon 
as they are born. While for music and poetry 
we have invented some means of preserva- 
tion, they are essentially impermanent in 
their beauty. They are arts which appeal to 
the ear, fleeting as the wind over the sea. 

We are in the habit of thinking of poetry 
at least as being a written art, dependent on 
paper and print for its life. That is largely 
so, but it ought not to be so at all. For 
poetry, like music, must be rendered in sound 
before it can come to its full effect and in- 
fluence. And this aspect of the art of poetry 
we should keep much more constantly in mind 
(at least so it seems to me) if we are to main- 

192 



tain our love for it and our power in it to 
any efficient degree. 

It is seldom, on the contrary, that poetry 
(to speak of only one art) ever has the oppor- 
tunity of reaching its fit hearers in its untar- 
nished glory. Our good readers are so la- 
mentably few, our taste for reading aloud is 
almost nil. The spread of elementary knowl- 
edge and the prevalence of journalism, how- 
ever admirable they may be in themselves, 
have tended to deterioration of the excellent 
art of reading aloud, and so have had an ill 
effect, too, I daresay, on the art of poetry 
itself. 

In thinking of poetry, then, let us think 
of it as something that must be heard to be 
appreciated at its best. In that way we shall 
not only come to place poetry in its true re- 
lation to ourselves; we shall be aiding, ever 
so little it may be, in readjusting the status 
of poetry and in emphasizing the beautiful 
and sympathetic quality its ephemeral nature 
elicits. 

193 



®n ISeinfl ineffectual 



Every day I live I am amazed that so many 
people should be content to be ineffectual in 
life. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that 
half the people in the world are ineffectual 
because they don't know how to try; and the 
other half are ineffectual because they don't 
even want to try. 

I have an idea that evil came on earth when 
the first man or woman said: " That isn't the 
best that I can do, but it is well enough." 
In that sentence the primitive curse was pro- 
nounced, and until we banish it from the 
world again we shall be doomed to ineffi- 
ciency, sickness, and unhappiness. Thorough- 
ness is an elemental virtue. In nature noth- 
ing is slighted, but the least and the greatest 

194 



of tasks are performed with equal care, and 
diligence, and patience, and love, and intel- 
ligence. 

We are ineffectual because we are slovenly 
and lazy and content to have things half done. 
We are willing to sit down and give up be- 
fore the thing is finished. Whereas we should 
never stop short of an utmost effort toward 
perfection so long as there is a breath in our 

body. 

Women, of course, are worse in this respect 
than men. Their existence does not depend 
on their efficiency, and therefore they can be 
almost as useless and inefficient as they please; 
whereas, men have behind them a very prac- 
tical incentive to efficiency, which goes by the 
name of starvation. 

And there are ineffectual men enough, cer- 
tainly. It is not a matter of large attempts, 
but of trifles — the accumulation of trifles 
that makes ultimate success. For character, 
like wealth, may be amassed in small quan- 
tities, as well as acquired in one day. If you 

195 



watch a woman dusting a room, you will 
know at once whether she will ever be able 
to do anything more important in the world, 
or whether she is destined to keep to such 
simple work all her days, going gradually 
from inefBciency to inefficiency, until she 
gives up at last in despair and falls into the 
ranks of the great procession of the failures 
in life. Watch a man harness a horse or mend 
a fence; you can tell whether or not he will 
ever own a horse and a farm. 

True, it may not matter whether the last 
nail is doubled over instead of being driven 
in to the head, but the state of mind which 
could be content with one nail too few is 
fatal. Indifference may not wreck the man's 
life at any one turn, but it will destroy him 
with a kind of dry-rot in the long run. There 
is a passion for perfection which you will 
rarely see fully developed ; but you may note 
this fact, that in successful lives it is never 
wholly lacking. 

I think one great reason for our common 
196 



®n litlna Kneffectual 

inefficiency lies in the fact that we neglect 
to correlate our forces. When we undertake 
a task, we do not bring all our powers to bear. 
I do not mean, of course, that we should ex- 
pend our utmost force on trifles; that is not 
necessary; we must always maintain a re- 
serve. I mean that we should call into play 
in every act something of each of our three 
natures. If there is a stone to be moved from 
the middle of the road, there is a right way 
to move it, and there are a hundred wrong 
ways. That implies the use of mind. I must 
bring my wits to the task. Also I may do 
it gladly, when it will be easy, or grudgingly, 
when it will be hard and exhausting. In 
short, for the half-moment, I must devote 
myself to the stone as thoroughly as if I were 
rolling it away from the door of heaven. 
Have you ever noticed a nursemaid getting 
her baby carriage over the curb? Usually 
she manages to give it the greatest jolt possi- 
ble. And I think as soon as women can get 
ofif of a street-car properly they should be 

197 



allowed to vote. It is never enough to put 
strength into the work, one must put heart 
and brains as well. 

This matter of correlating the three vital 
forces is at once perhaps the most important 
and the least understood element in personal 
success. It is, in my judgment, incomparably 
more important than any subject of study in 
our colleges or schools, more useful than any 
practical training we are now giving our 
young men and women; and it is so little 
understood that I doubt whether more than 
a very few have considered its real value. I 
am afraid that, when we do think of it, we 
are willing to take it for granted, without 
ever actually relying upon it. That is a pity. 
We may pervert and neglect our forces as 
we will; we may spend half a lifetime in 
using them amiss, and yet so small a trial of 
right adjustment and correlation would con- 
vince us of the enormous gain of power to 
be had in that direction. 



198 



®l)e ®ut0feirtets 



" To be even an outskirter in art leaves a 
fine stamp on a man's countenance." I had 
forgotten the quotation, if I ever knew it, 
until a friend recalled it recently in a letter. 
But it expresses well the position of so many, 
does it not? And that single word contains a 
power of suggestion. 

To be an outskirter. That is itself the very 
embodiment of the artistic aspiration and 
temper. For the artist, I dare fancy, is never 
desirous of being wholly absorbed; he dreads 
being committed past recall to any creed or 
course; he dwells at the static centre of op- 
posing forces, and sails leisurely in the eddies 
of the storm; his supreme fear is the loss of 
his independence and his power of detach- 

199 



ment. Show me a man who cannot make up 
his mind, and I will introduce you to a friend 
of mine who has the first rudiments of the 
artist about him. Like many sayings, this is 
not wholly true; for if a man really cannot 
ever make up his mind after deliberation, if 
he can make no choice between better and 
worse in aesthetic matters; if he has no taste 
to guide him, no instinct for beauty; if he 
remains for ever undecided, he is no artist 
at all. Such an unfortunate is only fitted to 
be a critic, or a professor, or a politician, or 
something of that sort; he can never hope 
to be a poet, or a carpenter, or a doer of 
things. I mean that one must have the habit 
of detachment, with the power of selection. 
To keep your mind already made up is to be 
dull and fossiliferous ; not to be able to make 
it up at all is to be watery and supine. These 
are the two types, each worse than the other. 
From the former came bigotry, bastinado, 
and all manner of bumptious cruelty and hate 
that can make this paradisal earth a Gehenna; 

200 



2Cf|e &ntuUlvttvu 

from the latter came the sloven, the sentimen- 
talist, and the tramp, that forceless contingent 
of humanity with no more backbone than a 
banana, which shuffles and bewails its way 
through this delightful valley of tears. 

To avoid both of these faults is necessary 
— and possible. Let us begin by forgetting 
for ever the vile superstition that " you can- 
not alter human nature." If you cannot alter 
human nature, you cannot alter anything on 
earth. That is all we are here for, to alter 
human nature, to make it more natural and 
more human. Let us begin with our own, 
and, when that is perfect, let us impart the 
perfection to our friends. Meanwhile, if we 
can perceive any hint and shadow of perfec- 
tion before unrecognized, let us call it to the 
attention of others. That is what art is for, 
to embody perfection, to manifest the ideals 
we have not yet attained. 

I should say, then, that artists at their best 
are very far from being indifferent folk or 
unenergetic; they are, however, capable of an 

20 1 



2riir iFt(enirsi^(ji of att 

almost complete detachment. They are veri- 
tably outskirters, and not partakers of the 
milling turmoil of existence. 'Tis part of 
their business to observe, but seldom, I imag- 
ine, to fight. Yet, they are not all outskirters. 
There was Shelley, for instance, and Carlyle. 
And I remember a lecture of Richard Hov- 
ey's (unrecorded, and delivered before a hand- 
ful of his friends, who will recall that master- 
ful treatment, that gentle humour, that beau- 
tiful voice which no one will hear again now) , 
in which he touched on this very theme in 
dealing with Shelley, and in which he seemed 
to think the quality of detachment not so im- 
portant in a poet, after all. Very likely he 
was right, and we must allow for the zeal of 
the prophets. At all events, the very theory 
of detachment would forbid us holding it too 
rigidly. And the outskirter may sometimes 
give a lusty buffet in the right cause where 
he sees an inviting opportunity. As it is 
written that the Prince of Peace once made 
a whip of cords and cleared out the greedy 

202 



money-changers, so you may wield a rope's 
end at times and be justified — yes, and be an 
outskirter still. 

Being an outskirter is not in the least like 
being an outlaw. The outskirter refuses to be 
absorbed in lesser things, that he may be the 
more wholly and freely devoted to following 
the higher law and filling the larger obliga- 
tion. The artist wishes to be free, not that he 
may escape any obligation, however humble, 
but that he may find the source and orbit of 
his capacity. He foregoes many pleasures 
that follow on compromise and conformity, 
for example, in order that at last, after toil- 
some days, he may justify himself to himself. 
Surely that is a harmless ambition. 

And then, while the great guild of artists 
may be considered in a sense outskirters in a 
world of active men, there are also outskirters 
in art — in a different sense. There are those 
who achieve no great things in art, who have 
not the gift or the time or the opportunity, 
perhaps, for making any solid contribution 

203 



to the beauty of the palace, who are still 
devoted servitors, not ashamed of a modest 
wage, and proud of the great house they serve. 
At least they have our place to fill; they 
help to form the society in which a great 
national art shall one day flourish for the 
betterment and the advancement of our kind. 
If we believe in the efficacy of art at all, we 
must stick to it, we must make it prevail more 
and more. 



204 



gLjie glytjgfg S03 



Browning, in his poem, *' One Word 
More," has the well-known line: 

" Gain the man's joy, miss the artist's sorrow." 

What is the artist's sorrow? Can you ask? 
After all, it is a sorrow not so different from 
other men's. In one word, it is disappoint- 
ment; and disappointment of a kind we all 
have felt, — the sense of thwarted and baffled 
expression. Fancy the artist, with his fair 
and enthralling ideal at first mistily afloat 
in his brain, then gradually growing clearer 
and clearer as he broods over it in serene hap- 
piness, and finally beginning to take created 
form. Is there any greater or purer pleasure 
than his? How fresh, how alluring, how un- 

205 



tarnished is the beauty of that thought! And 
with what untold delight he broods upon it, 
expectant of the unique revelation never yet 
vouchsafed to man, and which he alone is to 
communicate to his fellows! No, not a vain 
or conscious brooding; for I doubt if any 
artist pauses to think of himself. His joy is 
too instinctive, too elemental ; he cannot him- 
self quite tell why he is so happy; if you 
should ask him, he would be at a loss to ex- 
plain. But happy he is, bearing about in his 
dark mind the imperishable splendour. His 
whole being, his character, his personality, 
nay, his person, are illumined as with the 
sacred fire. He irradiates the glad glory of 
the elect. He has been enkindled with a coal 
from the altar of the very god. He is not 
consciously better than others; he is con- 
sciously only a normal man, and saddened 
only because others can be sad. In this rapt 
state he walks the earth, his head in the clouds 
— child of eternity and progenitor of unim- 
agined beauty. 

206 



©tie mmvn 3>off 

But wait an hour! Wait until the vanish- 
ing, evanescent ideal is nearer his grasp. Wait 
until he tries to embody it in palpable form 

in terms of colour or sound or shape. Ah, 

then you shall see a shadow of gloom over- 
spread his face. That magic thought, so new 
and lovely, which seemed at first so easy to 
express, refuses to be made manifest. Toil 
as he may, the artistry is still at fault. The 
report he can give of his wonderful vision 
is in no wise a faithful representation. Per- 
haps by a sudden flash, ,as of enchantment, he 
is able to render some phase of his ideal al- 
most perfectly; but then, alas, the enchant- 
ment does not hold! The next instant he fails 
again, and the harder he tries the more futile 
do his attempts become. O artist, save thy 
tears! Vex not thy heart at this bitter sorrow, 
for it is the common fate of all thy guild — 
never to be satisfied with the efifort. 

Yes, and this is the common sorrow of all 
of thy fellow mortals, too. Are we not, every 
one, beset by this very hindrance, the impossi- 

207 



bility of expression? And does not this dif- 
ficulty explain much of our disappointment 
and discontent with life? What a relief and 
pleasure it is to feel one's self thoroughly and 
adequately represented or expressed, even for 
a moment! When the complete idea in our 
mind, which may have been lying unex- 
pressed for a long time, suddenly some day 
finds its very self embodied in a perfect phrase 
or line or sentence of literature, how glad 
we are! How we welcome that artist, and 
how grateful we are to him for giving voice 
to our very thought! And when some senti- 
ment or emotion finds a like embodiment, 
what a feeling of satisfaction we have! And 
in these cases, it is only the expression of an- 
other which we have borrowed. How much 
more, then, are we delighted when the ex- 
pression is spontaneous, when we can unaided 
find the fit and perfect form in which to 
embody the breath of our own being, the word 
of the spirit. 
This same satisfaction, less in degree but 
208 



not the least different in kind, is ours in daily 
human intercourse, when we move happily 
and among our fellow men, — when we feel 
ourselves perfectly understood. It seems to 
me that we should come a shade nearer hap- 
piness in life if we constantly reminded our- 
selves of this truth : that life as we live it is 
an art, — is one of the greatest of the fine 
arts, — that, indeed, it is the one art which 
embraces all others. We should, I think, 
keep in mind the joy and the sorrow of the 
artist, and remember that our own happiness 
and discontent are largely similar to his. We 
should not forget that in the arts of speech and 
gesture and dress — in the arts of human in- 
tercourse — we are every instant using ex- 
actly the methods of all the other fine arts, 
and are making, for good or ill, undeniable 
revelations of ourselves. It is inevitable that 
we should be making hourly impressions on 
our friends. And does it not become an evi- 
dent duty that those impressions should be 
true, that they should actually represent us, 

209 



^fft jf'vittOiufiip of art 

that they should at least be brought under our 
conscious control, and made expressive as well 
as impressive? If we allow a discrepancy be- 
tween the impression we make on others and 
the expression we intended to embody, cer- 
tainly nothing but unhappiness can result. 
For the joy of life depends in no small meas- 
ure on living adequately, in filling our sphere, 
in leaving no chinks betw^een the veritable self 
and the great, beautiful, fascinating dominion 
of the senses. A being placed on this earth 
is fitted, you may be sure, both by inheritance 
and training, for living in accord with his 
surroundings. To bring himself into this 
close and satisfying relation is the clear duty 
and first privilege of all. And it can be done 
only through expression, only by honestly 
making the inward self real to the outward 
world. 

If we neglect to secure for ourselves true, 
sincere, pleasing, and reliable expression, 
which shall enable us to reach the utmost 
bounds of our being, it is as if a seed should 

2IO 



never grow to fill its outer shell. We should 
then hopelessly rattle about in a vast, rever- 
berating, empty world. I should, indeed, 
like to be the master of some fine art. I can 
fancy no more luxurious gladness in life. At 
least I should insist on cultivating the lesser 
arts of expression, — the personal arts, the 
arts of life. 



211 



Corpu0 Hmm ^nimm 



The case is so old that the very mention 
of it is almost a breach of etiquette. Wars 
have been waged, empires overturned, and the 
colour of the map changed a hundred times 
by so trifling a litigation. There appears one 
day among men a hairy prophet, coming 
down out of the mountains, a hermit, an 
ascetic, preaching righteousness and the para- 
mountcy of the spirit. Against the gay, the 
worldly, the happy, the thoughtless, the free, 
untrammelled children of the earth, this bleak 
foreboder of ill launches his rattling exhor- 
tations. In his cosmos there have never been 
any cakes and ale, and his strenuous mind is 
bent on contorting the visible world to his 
own lofty but narrow pattern. Again and 

212 



eotfiuss \)tvnnn 'Mnimuu 

again the chosen people of history were called 
on to listen to such a man, until it happens 
they have given us the most considerable and 
remarkable body of prophecy in the v^orld, 
and have impressed their idea of goodness 
permanently on our race. And the story of 
all nations is similar to theirs, revelations of 
righteousness and relapses to license — puri- 
tan and pagan at ceaseless war in the long 
struggle for ultimate perfection. In Eng- 
land, for only one example, how the court 
and the commonwealth strove together in a 
futile deadly clutch for mastery! Not a 
politcal struggle merely, but a moral one even 
more. Our friend Corpus, the dashing child 
of pleasure, horsed and ringleted, cheering 
after instinct down the delicious flowery roads 
of earth; and our old friend Animus, severe 
and noble, imbued terribly with the weight 
and serious consequence of life. 

You may side as you will; and probably 
you will side first with one and then with the 
other many times through a long youth before 

213 



SCJie iFtienlTfiiiiiji of ^tt 

you discover the uselessness of partisan quar- 
rels. But then at last some day, most likely 
in your golden thirties, when the false logic 
of extremes has dawned upon you, there will 
come the thought that light cannot exist with- 
out darkness, nor right without wrong, that 
the only thing that can exist without its op- 
posite is non-existence itself. And then your 
heart will not be torn asunder any more 
within you over the immemorial litigation in 
the case of Corpus versus Animus. You will 
perceive with wonder how eminently right 
they both are; you will cease giving your 
undivided allegiance to one or the other; you 
will content yourself with sharing the joys and 
sorrows of both alike ; and you will heave an 
enormous sigh of contentment that one more 
stormy cape of experience is past. 

Tolerance, tolerance, tolerance! Be not 
vexed at all if the roisterer is noisy in the 
tavern where you must eat a modest meal; 
neither vaunt yourself as virtuous because 
cold water is your only drink. For Corpus 

214 



eottitts ^etsttss antmttff 

has his virtues, too, — good, strong, generous, 
faithful, and inescapable Corpus! And never 
think for a moment that your high asceticism 
is better than his inane muscularity. He is 
but training himself according to his kind, 
that he may serve you the better according 
to your wisdom. And it behooves you to 
temper and control yourself with all learning, 
so that you can rightly use that loyal and 
willing servitor. 

Is it not true that for the most part we have 
been willing to correct the excesses and igno- 
rances of the body by a shameful disaffection 
and neglect? Noble and sincere as was the 
ascetic ideal, did it not sinfully maltreat an 
innocent, childish creature, when it heaped 
indignity and emaciation on this fair figure 
of humanity? Was the result not quite as 
bad as the sorry ravages of debauchery and 
animalism? But one may say, surely, that 
better thought is coming to prevail; that the 
ancient fancied antagonism between physical 
and spiritual is seen to be radically absurd; 

215 



Cijt jFttentTfiijjtii of ^tt 

that no advantage can accrue permanently to 
either except through the good-will of both. 
All this is indeed commonplace to the last 
jot, yet it is the sober, wholesome truth by 
which we need to stand, and to stand cou- 
rageously, until we realize for every one the 
Roman criterion — the sane mind in the 
sound body. Let us believe that never yet 
has that perfect poise of forces been reached. 
There have been scholars and there have been 
fighters; but seldom has the normal man 
walked the earth in utter health of body and 
spirit. We are too often warped by a wrong 
thought; the one ideal or the other deludes 
us; we enroll ourselves under Corpus or 
Animus, and take sides in that time-worn 
dispute, to our own lasting injury. Let us 
have done with it at once and for ever, and 
recognize an equal culture of the physical and 
the intellectual as the only training for per- 
fection. It is so necessary to have a true ideal, 
to know the better way. And a very small 
experience should teach us the truth in this 

216 



eottiuis ijerstts '^nimnn 

case. I could wish that Whitman's prophe- 
cies were heeded more generally, and his 
sturdy, beautiful aspirations more gladly ac- 
cepted. I could wish that men and women 
would treat themselves more rationally, with 
greater care for the balance of their forces. 
It is true, perhaps, that we shall develop a 
civilization in time where might will not be 
the only right; but we shall do so to our own 
destruction, if we do not take greater and 
greater care of our physical selves. We shall 
never be as happy as angels until we are 
healthy as animals. 



217 



SimpUtttg 



It is customary to sound the praises of sim- 
plicity in our day and to belaud the habit of 
an earlier time, when, as we declare, life was 
less complicated than at present. In the midst 
of a vital and nascent civilization we are per- 
haps none too prone to emulate the virtues of 
our fathers or imitate their excellent qualities. 
Yet we may easily mistake their blessings. 
Is simplicity, after all, so admirable a trait 
of character, so fine a quality in art? 

And what is this simplicity of life for which 
we sigh? We speak of the simplicity of na- 
ture, the simplicity of a flower, but surely 
nothing is more wonderfully complex than 
all the beautiful products of the natural 
world. A leaf, for instance, — one single, 

218 



Simplititp 

fresh, green maple leaf from the myriads of 
the forest to-day, — seems at first glance sim- 
plicity itself. Yet its symmetry is not geo- 
metrical, but only artistic. It conforms but 
roughly, though inexorably, to its type. It 
has no perfect fellow in all the whole earth 
full of green companions. It is not a machine 
product. It hasn't the simplicity of straight 
line and circle. It cannot be reproduced; 
can hardly be imitated. It has individuality, 
properties, parts, functions, growth, colour, 
vitality, and a period of its existence. That 
is no simple matter. 

Lower in the scale of nature there is greater 
simplicity. Inorganic is simpler than or- 
ganic. Last of all comes primal cosmos, or 
chaos, which is simplicity itself. On the other 
hand, the farther you go ahead in the devel- 
opment of nature, the more complex does it 
become. Simplicity, truly, means life re- 
duced to its lowest terms. But that is not what 
we actually desire, I fancy. 

You tell me you love the simplicity of na- 
219 



2Cfte ffvitnnnl^iv of fltt 

ture, you are glad to get away from the com- 
plications of city life. Yes, that is the phrase 
we commonly use, but I think there is a good 
deal of error in it. What is it that wearies 
us in town? Not the work we have to do, 
so much as the strain of unnatural ugliness and 
noise in which we allow ourselves to dwell. 
For work is not a burden, but a pleasurable 
activity, a natural function of the healthy and 
happy; but noise and ugliness are against the 
trend of spirit as it passes from the lower to 
the finer life. Noise and ugliness are prim- 
itive and simple ; music and beauty are com- 
plex, and we only reach them in our progress 
toward ideal perfection. To take a single 
instance: you will admit that many of the 
gongs on the street-cars make a hideous din; 
they contribute not a little to the dissonance 
of city noises. But suppose that we should 
go to the trouble and expense of making our 
gongs musical. Suppose that they were all 
made of the finest bell metal, carefully at- 
tuned, how much plcasanter that would be I 

220 



And then, further, suppose that each bell were 
made to strike its own musical note, and that 
all were harmonized, how much more pleas- 
ure to the jaded nerves! And in each im- 
provement, you will observe, we should be 
making a step away from the simplicity of 
noise and toward the complexity of music. 
We should be discarding machinery in favour 
of art. 

And, again, think of the hideousness of our 
streets, — our rows and rows of brownstone 
fronts, as you look down the side streets on 
the way up-town, — every house exactly like 
its neighbour, and every street almost exactly 
like the next. There is monotonous simplic- 
ity for you, and the result is deadly. Now 
if every house were given a beautiful and 
individual character of its own, and that char- 
acter so modified as to conform to its neigh- 
bours, how fine a block you might have ! And, 
further, if each block were made to harmo- 
nize to some extent with those about it, how 
fine a cityl Again, in each step of improve- 

221 



ment we should be advancing from the simple 
to the complex, from chaos to art. For art 
is not the antithesis of nature ; but nature and 
art are both the antithesis of chaos. It is 
when we give up loving care and put our trust 
in machinery that we begin to move back- 
ward to monotony, simplicity, ugliness, and 
death. 

If we would remedy the annoyance of city 
life, we must be willing to take thought for 
it. We must be willing to spend time and 
trouble and money in order to have music 
instead of noise in our car bells, in order to 
have beauty instead of simplicity in our archi- 
tecture. 

Now if you think you can solve the prob- 
lem of modern life for yourself by withdraw- 
ing from the fray, you are mistaken. You 
may set up your studio in the top of a twenty- 
story building, and moon there over your 
emasculate daubs, while the twentieth cen- 
tury is racing beneath your feet; but you 
will never lay on a brushful of paint that will 

222 



Siinjiltcfti? 

stay. There is a lot of dirty work to be done 
in the world yet, and, if we are not fitted to 
help in it, we must at least stand by and give 
it our sympathy. 

Then in the realm of art itself, it is not 
simplicity we admire, but harmonious unity, 
the complex blending of colours and tones. 
Simplicity would mean the crude juxtaposi- 
tion of one raw colour by another, the striking 
of one note without regard to its fellow. And 
in poetry, when you pass from the regularity 
of the school of Pope to the apparently freer 
metrical usage of Wordsworth and Tennyson 
and Keats, you fancy at first that you are re- 
turning to simpler methods; and when you 
come to Emerson and Whitman, you say you 
have reached simplicity itself. But that is 
exactly the reverse of the truth. The cadences 
of " Leaves of Grass " are far more intricate 
than those of '^ The Essay on Man.'' 

The only simplicity that is desirable is sim- 
plicity of soul, a certain singleness of aim and 
quiet detachment of vision, a mood of endur- 

223 



cue ffvitnUH'^tp of att 

ing repose not at variance with constant en- 
deavour, a habit of content, contemplation, 
and peace, that abides undistracted in har- 
mony with other habits of activity and toil. 
This is not the simplicity of chaos, but the 
simplicity of order, the assurance that comes 
from the perception of law and the triumph 
of beauty. This is the higher simplicity, the 
simplicity of nature and mathematics, which 
comprehends their many complexities in a 
unity of being. 



224 



€i)t Ma^it of ti)e Wooi& 



Sometimes I think we feel it most power- 
fully when it comes upon us afresh, as we 
emerge from thronging streets some morning 
in spring; indeed, even on the street corners 
themselves it may overtake us suddenly in 
the April twilight, in a bunch of mayflowers 
or a pussy-willow spray. Then how quickly 
the humdrum and soil of habit are forgotten! 
We are reinstated instantly with the zest of 
a primitive unjaded life, and are almost will- 
ing to declare that existence has no other end 
than this in-rush of joy, this conversio\i in the 
blood. It seems to justify the narrow plod- 
ding to which we have been confined all the 
gray days of winter, and to heighten our ap- 
preciation of a freedom of spirit, which, we 
know now, is ours by right of inheritance. 

225 



The coming of spring, say the wise to them- 
selves, is the mystic book of revelation in the 
great volume of nature, the superb transcend- 
ent note, reassuring doubt, dissolving fear, 
establishing happiness for ever and ever. 
And there is nothing so rare as a day in June, 
partly because we reach it through blizzard 
and fog and east wind, through toil and forti- 
tude and iron persistence. 

And then, again, it seems, at the end of 
summer, as if the true magic of the woods 
were only put forth after long reserve, slowly, 
timorously, shyly exerting over us its most 
potent influence. There are hints and signs, 
now and then, indeed, which make the care- 
less wonder whether he has seen any touch 
of the true magic of the woods at all. Per- 
haps once or twice between August and De- 
cember the exact moment may occur for the 
tireless observer when glimpses of the un- 
worldliness of nature may come to him, and 
he may hear or think he hears the glad orac- 
ular whisper of the universal message. He 

226 



may then have the rare fortune (in perfect 
health, in perfect goodness, of a sound mind) 
to feel himself for an instant in complete har- 
mony with all being. He is no longer a jar- 
ring note in a splendid theme; no longer 
knows himself somehow at variance with his 
surroundings; no longer perceives the gulf 
between ideal and fact, wish and perform- 
ance; but from a profound inexplicable con- 
tent is only able to say: 

" Beauty through my senses stole; 
I yielded myself to the perfect whole." 

I do not mean to speak in fables; I only 
refer to those experiences of the magic of 
nature which we all have had. It is this magic 
which draws us out of the city and away from 
our palaces of art back to the fundamental 
and sincere. It is at the bottom of our cry 
for simplicity, our cry for recreation and rest. 
It is the magic of the woods which makes the 
essence of our summer holiday and infuses 
us anew with the inspiring taste of real life. 

227 



Silt jfvittOin'^ip of att 

And even if the utmost wonder of that magic 
is hidden from us, there still remains the 
wholesome touch of an unsophisticated mode 
of life. 

There we have a palpable secret to take 
home with us. If the woods will not tell us 
what their magic really is, they certainly offer 
us a comment on our own life. In running 
away from the forms of civilization to the 
refuge of nature we do well. But why? Be- 
cause nature is greater and better than man 
with his art? Not at all; simply because all 
of nature is good, while much of our own 
art of living is lamentably bad. And we make 
a grievous error if we attempt to love nature 
to the total exclusion of the civilized and 
civilizing arts. Nature is inexorable, but 
man's art is tentative and haphazard. It is 
seldom perfect; it is nearly always a com- 
promise or a makeshift. Nature's laws are 
established; the future of man is still prob- 
lematical. It follows that nothing in nature 
can be rejected or despised, while much in 

228 



our civilization is to be improved or dis- 
carded altogether. And what we are to bring 
home from nature is the large temper of pa- 
tience. We are not to return to the artificial 
mode of life with scorn for its artificiality, 
but with love for its art. It took nature un- 
counted aeons to get as far as primitive man; 
but man in a single year, by comparison, has 
achieved his splendid art of life. All that is 
most worth living for is as much the gift of 
art as of nature. Nature gave us the impulse, 
the joy, the power; but we have given our- 
selves the means of making these things pre- 
vail. If the usual course of life as we know 
it seems to us futile and vapid and false, that 
is the fault of a bad art of life. Well, then, 
let us get a better art; let us adjust ourselves 
more exactly to the environment; let us mod- 
ify both desire and condition until they coin- 
cide. Don't let us waste time in stupidly 
reviling modern life as artificial; let us make 
it artistic. This does not mean that we are 
to import more of the fine arts into our lives, 

229 



but that we are to evolve a fine art of life 
itself, as a nation and as individuals. If a 
few people can live in peace, in security, with 
comfort and love and a reasonable amount of 
freedom, that means that the art of modern 
life is good — to a certain extent. When 
every one can live so, it will mean that art 
has improved — is nearing perfection. It 
seems to me that at the summer's end, when 
we can say: 

** My heart had a touch of the woodland time," 

the greater portion of that experience must 
result in a renewal of enthusiasm for the 
beautiful art of life, an impulse of generosity 
and hope for others. The only use of an out- 
ing is to reinforce one's faith for the next 
inning. A love of nature can surely never 
make a man either a morose hermit or a pre- 
cious aesthetic. Rightly loved, nature must 
make us more resourceful and apt in the prac- 
tice of the complex art of living, more unex- 
acting and humane. 

230 



®f Ctt^iltiation 



There is some confusion, is there not, in 
our minds when we think of our civilization, 
and balance its benefits against its perplex- 
ities, as we do? Our often complaints against 
it may be justly made only against our own 
misconception. 

In moments of irritation we are in the habit 
of finding fault with modern civilization, as 
we call it; and in a pique we turn our backs 
on town and society and betake ourselves to 
more or less sequestered resorts where we 
promise ourselves the enjoyment of nature 
and a return to simplicity. But in reality what 
we are fleeing from is not civilization but our 
own vulgar and rather stupid multiplication 

231 



Efft ffvitvCttuftip of art 

of effects, our overelaborate accumulation of 
mere machinery. 

Of true civilization one need never tire. 
Indeed, it is impossible to tire of it, since 
civilization is a state of growth, — is the con- 
stant actualization of our best ideals, — is 
nothing more than the realization of our best 
selves. 

Civilization, I suppose, is the best we can 
attain in our progress toward perfection. 
That road is long and difficult, and there 
are many illusions in the way to delay the 
traveller and turn him aside. Not the least 
of these illusions are things, gross material 
possessions, which we deem at times quite 
necessary to our comfort and which we come 
to count as an essential factor in civilized life. 
But material possessions are only means to an 
end; and it depends entirely on our use of 
them whether or not they aid us in the task 
of civilizing our life. A Bushman is not civ- 
lized merely by being placed in a palace or 
in a luxurious New York hotel ; though de- 

232 



cent and comfortable surroundings are an 
almost essential help in humanizing the spirit. 
Nor could a civilized man like Lincoln or 
Marcus Aurelius or John Wesley be made 
barbarous by being housed in a cave or a 
tepee. In fact, in the first case, the palace 
or the hotel might be eminently glaring and 
hideous and debasing to the spirit, in spite 
of all its luxury, while in the second case our 
civilized tenant of the cave could more read- 
ily give his own complexion to his surround- 
ings for the time being. 

The case is simply this: In our task of 
civilizing ourselves there are certain neces- 
sities of the animal man that must be met, 
that remain constant, whatever his state. He 
must be housed and clothed and fed. His 
children must be reared and trained, and 
provision must be made against sickness and 
incapacity. Now, the means which man 
takes to do these few things are infinitely 
various. He may do them very simply, as 
the Indians used to do them, and as the Afri- 

333 



8f J)^ ffvittOtniiip of ^vt 

can and the Eskimo still does them; or he 
may do them with enormous elaboration and 
multiplicity of detail, as the Londoner and 
the New Yorker does them to-day. But it is 
to be noted that the manner of doing these 
things is not in any way an essential part of 
civilization. A man may have at his com- 
mand all the luxuries of the twentieth cen- 
tury, and still lack all the rudiments of civili- 
zation. Almost any thoughtful person will 
acknowledge this strange confusion of ideas 
of ours, and yet it is because we continually 
confuse material prosperity with spiritual and 
intellectual progress that we are so retarded 
in the path to perfection. 

Evidently it is only common sense that we 
should get our necessary man's work done as 
quickly and easily as possible. To be fed 
and clothed and housed is the prime consid- 
eration. Very well, then, let us have this done 
with utmost expedition. Let us invent all 
manner of contrivances of wood and iron and 
steam and electricity to save ourselves labour 

234 



in providing these common requirements. 
Surely we have worked marvels of ingenuity 
in that direction! But what then? How shall 
we employ ourselves? What shall we do 
when these first human wants are satisfied? 
Shall we go on elaborating the means of liv- 
ing, or shall we devote some time to life itself, 
to civilizing ourselves? 

After a certain point is reached, the in- 
crease of material possessions is a palpable 
burden, a mere incumbrance to us in our at- 
tempt to civilize and humanize existence. 
To command happiness in my life, I must 
be master of conditions, so far as I can. I 
must have within my power the means of sat- 
isfying my needs. I must have, if you will, 
the luxuries of the day. But if I simply keep 
on multiplying my physical needs, so that it 
absorbs all my energy to satisfy them, I am 
no longer a master of conditions, but their 
slave. I do not command my wants; my 
wants command me. The essential man in 
me is arrested and absorbed in mere means of 

235 



SCI^t :ffvittOfnftip of ^vt 

living, and has no energy nor intelligence left 
for living itself. 

But all the while it is folly to turn our back 
on civilization. For in all this great mass of 
material prosperity is hidden the leisure 
which can make a higher civilization possi- 
ble. And if I find city life a burden because 
of its endless demands and material engross- 
ments, I am not, therefore, to become an em- 
bittered faultfinder with my age. It were 
more sensible to take moderately from the 
abundant store which modern ingenuity has 
provided, and, having simplified my needs, 
devote myself to beautifying my inner life, 
and to making life about me more interesting 
and happy. For so I shall be forwarding 
civilization — by civilizing myself and those 
with whom I must come in contact, not by 
overloading myself with endless elaborations. 

Possessions are good and delightful and 
necessary. But they are only good and de- 
lightful and necessary in so far as they min- 
ister to happiness. They cannot of themselves 

236 



give us happiness; they can only give the pos- 
sibility of happiness and immunity from want. 
It is we ourselves who must distil from this 
immunity and possibility the honey of joy 
which we all desire. 

Civilization does not reside in all those 
things which we give our lives so breathlessly 
to obtain; it is to be found in the hearts of 
our friends, in the thought and science and 
art of the day. And if the civilization of my 
time seem to me hard and mean and material- 
istic, the fault is probably in my own mind as 
much as in my neighbour's millions. 



237 



3Su0ine0S anir JSeaufg 



We are told so constantly and so insistently 
that business is the chief concern of life that 
it almost comes to seem true. And, indeed, it 
is not altogether healthy, nor the mark of a 
strong man, always to be setting one's face 
against the drift and tendency of one's own 
time, — always to be a faultfinder, a prophet 
of ill, a censor, a petty cynic. It is better to 
temper such a critical spirit with something 
of the spirit of one's own time, if that time 
have in it anything at all of honesty, of vigour, 
of helpfulness. 

It is well to think little of the boastful and 
ruthless industrialism which engulfs our life; 
it is well to look upon patriotism and find it 
only a second-rate virtue; it is well to detest 

238 



strife and war and vulgar commercial ag- 
grandizement. And yet a man must have a 
poor spirit never to have loved his own coun- 
try; never to have set his nerve to acquire 
some longed-for end, against odds and obsta- 
cles and disappointments and disastrous fate; 
and never to have desired for himself and his 
own a good meal and a soft bed. 

There must surely have been few periods 
in history which could not have yielded some- 
thing wholesome and inspiring to those who 
lived in them, and which cannot teach us even 
now strange and vigorous lessons in life. And 
the prime wisdom of to-day, as of every day 
of the world, is to perceive wherein its dis- 
tinction and virtue lie, to mark its best charac- 
teristic, and to cultivate whatever of good it 
presents to us. Always and in all things to 
feel one's self out of accord with one's own 
time is as grave a fault as it would be for 
an apple to feel itself out of accord with its 
orchard, or for a frog to feel himself out of 
accord with his pool. It is admirable to have 

239 



Ci&e iFtUtiirstiiiJ oe art 

mental detachment, and to be superior to the 
jolt and jargon of the days. It is folly to miss 
their sweetness, their strength, their far-see- 
ing endurance, and the patient repose which 
underlies their distraction, their dissipation, 
their blind hurry. 

Our judgment must be critical; our tem- 
perament must be appreciative. To cultivate 
the first to the exclusion of the second is to 
become a confirmed pessimist. To indulge 
the second to the exclusion of the first is to 
become a complacent and fatuous optimist. 
You have your choice between a pedant's hell 
and a fool's paradise. The wise man is he 
who sets himself to cultivate both faculties 
— the heart that always loves, the rnind that 
is never deceived. Nor are they in the least 
inconsistent; for the more we know and 
understand, the more wonderfully can we 
love and enjoy; and the more we love and 
are glad, the better can we comprehend. 

To know, to appreciate, and to do — this is 
perhaps the whole business of life. To know 

240 



the truth, to appreciate the best, to do what 
is beautiful is a threefold task that may well 
tax our most persistent and unflagging ener- 
gies through however long a lifetime; and 
it would seem as if the whole eflfort of the 
universe were to make possible that consum- 
mation. If ever we approach it, we shall 
know by the test of happiness that we are near 
the enchanted ground, the garden of the gods, 
the fairy-land that actually exists. 

Making all allowances, then, for the folly 
of the overcritical spirit, it still remains true 
that in criticism we must first of all be skep- 
tical of things as they are, and to the last put 
forth all endeavour to learn where and why 
and how they are to be improved. It is the 
duty of the critical spirit not only to see things 
as they are, but to see them as they ought to 
be; just as it is the duty of the imaginative 
and creative spirit, not only to see them as 
they ought to be, but to bring them into ac- 
cord with that more perfect arrangement. It 
is safe enough to say, therefore, that it is bad 

241 



©tie :ffvitvCiiufti» of art 

for us to be given to self-laudation in criti- 
cism, and that the more severe arraignment 
we make of ourselves and our progress the 
better, so that our sight may be clear and our 
foresight touched with purpose. 

Perhaps the most sv^eeping accusation that 
can be made against us as a people to-day 
is to say that we care overmuch for business 
and overlittle for beauty. It is an accusation 
which is painfully trite, but it is one that needs 
to be kept alive, none the less. For as we 
make toward the goal of material supremacy, 
we may be in danger, in ever-increasing dan- 
ger, of missing the only goal of all ultimate 
supremacy, — the realization of a supreme 
manhood. Think of the increasing stress that 
is being laid upon wealth in the popular mind, 
calculated to debase its ideals, to confirm it 
in its errors, to make it content with its gross 
and brutalizing standards! Think of asking 
whether it is well for a business man to be 
college bred! Where does any one suppose 
the United States would be to-day if our fore- 

242 



fathers had thought it was just as well for 
a farmer or a blacksmith not to know how to 
read? Can any one look carefully at modern 
industrial enterprise (to say nothing of nobler 
activities of our day) and declare that it is 
not due to the democratizing of intelligence 
and education? If a college education unfits 
a man for business, then there is either some- 
thing wrong with business or something 
wrong with the education. The truth is, 
probably, that there is something wrong with 
both. There certainly, is something wrong 
with an education which attempts to culti- 
vate a man's mind and body, without once 
perceiving any essential connection and inter- 
dependence between the two processes, and 
which omits all spiritual culture entirely. By 
spiritual culture I do not mean a training 
in morals; I mean a training and develop- 
ing of a whole spiritual nature, which is the 
seat and origin of all creative energy, of all 
initiation, of imagination, of artistic impulse 
and activity. The average education is faulty 

243 



because it contents itself with enlarging the 
receptive faculties, powers of thought and 
reason and memory, and does nothing to en- 
large the faculties of self-expression, of use- 
fulness, of helpfulness, because it gives us a 
mass of knowledge and no instruction in the 
use of that knowledge; because it gives us 
gigantic muscles, but never tells us what to 
do with them. Just one-half of man's needs 
are forgotten, and instead of turning out men, 
we turn out pedants and football players, the 
one as useless as the other, and both an encum- 
brance to the community and to themselves. 
Certainly one would not wish to have the 
standard of scholarship lowered, or the num- 
ber of scholars diminished; but, also, quite 
as certainly one would wish to have their in- 
creased powers directed and given self-con- 
trol, and to have them balanced by a realiza- 
tion of the possibilities of life. 

And the possibilities of life are certainly 
not limited to the exigent demands of busi- 
ness. Any man who is a " business man pure 

244 



and simple," as it is called, is just so much 
less a man. Just as a scholar who is nothing 
but a scholar, or an athlete who is nothing 
but an athlete, is just so much less a man. 

If our enormously developing business de- 
mands more and more men who are merely 
specialists, and who must be trained from 
early boyhood to fit them for the severe com- 
petition, you may say, so much the better for 
business; but I say, so much the worse for 
the nation. Man does not live by bread alone 
now any more than he ever did. Less, indeed! 

It is just as needful for a nation as for an 
individual to remember that the life is more 
than meat and the body than raiment. And 
a people that becomes forgetful of the de- 
lights of beauty is in danger of becoming for- 
getful of the delights of life. Captains of 
industry are useful members of society, for 
the time being at all events, but they are not 
more useful than captains of intellect or mas- 
ters of an art. We must not let ourselves 
forget that. We must keep always in mind 

245 



^ftt jpvitt(iini)i» of art 

the ideals of intelligence and culture and lib- 
erty whereto we were born; we must see to 
it that they are never tarnished by the breath 
of a too-evident prosperity. But all the while, 
of course, we must keep our ideals with a 
poised and serene mind, and confront their 
antagonists with refutation, not with dispar- 
agement. We shall have something to learn, 
even from a nation of ironmongers. And we 
should have much to teach them. It should 
be exemplified in our own conduct of life 
that beauty is not less important than busi- 
ness in the making of a people. 



246 



Cije ©ati)0 of ©eaee 



It is the eve of the gladdest festival of the 
year, the day set apart as a memorial to that 
serene and beautiful Being whom his fol- 
lowers delight to call the Prince of Peace. 
So old and beloved is the holiday that the 
mere word Christmas itself is more rich in 
the aroma of kindly and moving associations 
than any effusion of yours or mine could be. 

As children we innocently believed in the 
little round-bellied chimney god and the good 
persecuted Martyr of Calvary with equal rev- 
erence. He who filled our stockings with 
candy and toys and gilded baubles was quite 
as generous, and much more real, than He 
who guarded and loved our souls. In the 
early dark hours did we not wake up and 
stealthily feel each stocking toe-tip? And 

247 



were they not actually stuffed with the long- 
desired treasures? Could any proof be 
stronger? And then in a few years, as the 
cold suspicion of truth stole over the child 
mind like an autumn frost, and good St. Nick 
was discovered to be a myth, did we not 
silently try to perpetuate the crumbling 
dogma? That all his miraculous kindliness 
should be only the work of our parents, after 
all, was too sad to be believed. The frail 
tissue of fable on which we had so confidingly 
relied was far too lovely to be ruthlessly 
destroyed by any prosy fact; and there stole 
over our perception, I think, a sort of sadness 
at the disillusion, so that we would not will- 
ingly admit even to ourselves that the delight- 
ful and impossible children's paradise was at 
an end. It was, though ; and in time we came 
to substitute an understanding human love of 
those who cared for us for the ruined fairy- 
tale of Santa Claus and his Christmas team. 
It was good to have something to take the 
place of that which we had lost. 

248 



There are many grown-up children who 
do not write letters to Santa Claus and post 
them in the empty fireplace any longer; who 
have discarded the doctrine of the fireside 
Christmas Eve divinity with much superior- 
ity; who would scorn to hang a stocking by 
their bed to-morrow night; who would scoff 
at the idea that it might be filled once again, 
if only they wished hard enough; and who 
none the less will go to their temples on Christ- 
mas Day with the unshaken hallucination that 
the Great Orderer of the universe is to be 
influenced by many solicitations. It may be 
so; it may be that this round world is ruled 
by some great cosmic Santa Claus who doles 
out blessings while we are unaware, and is 
swayed by the urgent supplications of his 
children. I have my doubts. I have a sus- 
picion that this, too, is no more than a nursery 
tale, though a decent reverence for all ancient 
beauty makes us shrink from acknowledging 
the infatuation even to ourselves. 

When the myth of the good St. Nicholas 
249 



^fft :ffvitt(tfnfti» of ^vt 

had to be destroyed, in the interests of so- 
called education and truth, still there re- 
mained behind the poetic symbol, the solid 
though less attractive fact of human parental 
care and loving kindness. But when you take 
away the greater myth of the St. Nicholas for 
grown-ups, on what fact am I to rely? Is 
that, too, merely a symbol of human love and 
the kindliness of our own hearts? Among 
the marvels of science is that contrivance 
which from an elaborate sort of magic lan- 
tern casts moving and lifelike pictures upon 
a curtain for our edification. Is the matter 
of our destiny some such enormous shadow 
cast upon the curtain of the universe from the 
tiny luminous point of mortal soul? Still, 
how wonderful the mechanism must be! And 
who invented that? 

Well, perhaps it is not important, after all. 
I am quite sure that our good friend from 
Nazareth would care very little how you ex- 
plained him or the Father he talked about, 
so long a§ you cherished his teaching. We 

250 



have hardly come to that yet; we cannot 
prILe unfversal love. But at least we can 
profess it. I suppose that is something. 

Meanwhile, for this day and year our fes- 
tival of peace is rudely disturbed^ Dream as 
we will of the spread of the kmgdom of love 
the old custom of bloodshed remams. We 
be Christians in name, but Jehovists and 
Norse pagans in reality. Who are the ex- 
ponents of modern Christianity? The Anglo 
Saxons. And now, at the dawn of the las 
vear of nineteen Christian centuries, one 
Lanch of that dominant race '^ "eading on 
a feeble Oriental people, while its sister 
branch is waging desperate war with a stub- 
born foe in Africa. Is this any better th n 
a Roman or a Macedonian campaign? You 
say the English and the Americans have righ 
on their side, and justice, and the good of the 
world? Yes, but how can love fight at all? 
Christ never resisted; he didn't believe in 
resistance. Probably he was in error If not 
how, then, can you justify your profession of 



his doctrine while you are violating its letter 
and spirit? 

It is the old dilemma; the battle is to the 
strong, and the strong are only made through 
battle; then how shall we preserve our in- 
tegrity as men, and yet allow wars to cease? 
The law of life is that it shall live by strife; 
the life that ceases to strive dies of decay. 
Then, perhaps, we may eliminate hate with- 
out eliminating strife. It is said that the 
hunter does not hate the animal he kills — not 
always. Perhaps we shall some day actually 
come to love our enemies, as we were advised 
to do so long ago. 



252 



^ Cjjrtstmas UcHtk 



When the first daring missionaries, full 
of zeal for the new creed, set forth from Rome 
to carry the glad tidings into old Britain, they 
found there a race just budding into civiliza- 
tion. They must have had much the same 
feeling toward the inhabitants of that far-off 
province that we find in ourselves toward the 
dwellers in Darkest Africa or the Islands of 
the Utmost Sea. Buoyed by an unquestioning 
faith, they went fearlessly forward to carry 
the Word, the only truth, to those who sat in 
impenetrable darkness, as it seemed to them. 
There could be no question in their mind as 
to the saving value of the new belief. They 
preached with conviction and warmth, be- 
cause they believed with fervour and without 

253 



equivocation. And it would hardly occur to 
them to look for anything of good in the an- 
cient earthly beliefs they were so eager to 
supplant. With that singleness of purpose, 
that persistency of sublime confidence to 
which nothing is denied, they went about 
their task with unquenchable ardour and de- 
cision. A mere handful of devoted souls at 
first, following the footsteps of the chosen 
Twelve to whom the Message was originally 
entrusted, they went cheerfully about the 
business of persuading the known world to 
their way of thinking. How well they suc- 
ceeded, let modern civilization attest. 

Let us never depreciate the power of so 
supreme a faith, a devotion so consuming 
and so noble; for that is the very spirit we 
need at all times, a spirit of hopeful belief 
in the ultimate triumph of ideals. But we 
have come at this end of time to look upon the 
earth and our own history with a more dis- 
passioned eye, and to regard the events of our 
racial evolution with a certain mental detach- 

254 . 



ment, which we call the scientific spirit. And 
that is well, too ; for we must have the abso- 
lute truth, at all costs, for our peace of mind, 
just as we need ultimate goodness for our 
peace of heart, and utmost beauty for our 
enjoyment of life. We have come to see in 
the outworn religions of the earth which 
Christianity has supplanted, not mere heathen- 
ish superstition, but the first crude ef^forts of 
the human soul, endeavouring to formulate 
its instincts for righteousness, its intuitions 
of the sublime, its inherent belief in a divine 
origin and outcome for all things. The beau- 
tiful gods of pagan Greece, whose cult has 
given to modern art and literature such an 
immeasurable stimulus; the pitiful gods of 
the Polar night; the subtle and still-living 
gods of the mysterious Orient; the lore of 
all these human creeds is not to be despised, 
but to be studied. Very likely they are in- 
adequate in their conception of the universe, 
and unwise in many of their moral sanctions; 
still they stand there in testimony of man's 

255 



8Ciie ;ffvitnX(nlilp of ^tt 

reach after the infinite. Pan and Vesta and 
Hanuman and the unrecorded divinities of 
outlandish tongues are neither hateful nor 
despicable, but only imperfect. They are, 
surely one must believe, partial revelations of 
the truer Truth, the better Goodness, the more 
imperishable Beauty. 

So, too, we may be sure that the rude wor- 
ship of our ancient fathers in the wilderness 
of Britain, little as we know of it, was not 
without lovely traits and touches of aspira- 
tion. Those watchers who gathered to see 
the sun rise over Stonehenge last midsum- 
mer day must have been impressed by a sol- 
emn regard for the old druidical faith which 
planted those monoliths in their significant 
ring, so that the great light of day at his 
summer solstice enters exactly through the 
door of that primitive temple. Not sun- 
worshippers, perhaps, but nature-worship- 
pers our fathers must have been, when the 
new teaching came to them in their island 
fastnesses. In the names Yule and Easter, 

256 



marking certain pagan festivals of nature, 
vague records of these Northern religions 
come down to us, and upon the dates of those 
festivals other festivals of the Christian cult 
were grafted. So that when we celebrate our 
winter holiday, we are not merely keeping the 
memorial of Christ's nativity, but, all uncon- 
sciously, are following the immemorial rites 
of an earlier custom, strange and barbarous, 
yet natural, after all. 

In the story of all peoples there will be 
things too far off to be remembered save in 
the most shadowy tradition. The worship 
of Linus or Adonis among the earliest Greeks 
is surrounded with impenetrable mystery. It 
had changed and been lost before the time 
of records began ; but we know it was some- 
how typical of the changing seasons, the pulse 
of life and death through the revolving year. 
We may fancy, in the same way, that the most 
elemental facts of nature, the waxing and 
waning of the days from summer to winter, 
the perishing of the year at autumn and its 

257 



Zftt :ffvitnXfnftip of Mvt 

revival in spring, would be the first to be 
celebrated in forms of worship among a peo- 
ple so dependent on the favour of the sun. 
They would see in the great luminary, if not 
a divinity, at least a direct administration of 
the Divine Mind. And, as it passed in its 
huge pendular swing from solstice to solstice, 
from the long days of an English June to 
the brief and reluctant hours of the shortest 
day of winter, they would feel their depend- 
ence on the Unknown, their need of a benefi- 
cent Providence, their pleasure in abundant 
warmth, their shrinking at the pinch of cold, 
and their helplessness before the vagaries of 
every season's vicissitudes. The wunds and 
rains of spring, with the returning birds in 
the forest; the heats of summer setting all 
the land at leisure; the ripening of fruits in 
autumn; these things would make their hearts 
unfold. The generous year would enter their 
blood to mitigate the darker strain of human 
sorrow and inexplicable death. They would 
grasp quickly at the poetic analogy between 

258 



the life of man and the life of nature through 
the season's progress. Seeing all nature die 
down and revive, they w^ould eagerly guess 
at a future for the soul, an eternal spring- 
time supervening upon the autumn of mor- 
tality. 

The feast of Yule, v^e may guess, w^as one 
of merrymaking, because then the year was 
at its bitterest, hope apparently at the last 
ebb with the ebbing sun, and men, therefore, 
driven indoors for intercourse and entertain- 
ment. For frost, in moderation, is a great 
civilizer, necessitating the home and the fire- 
side. It is difficult to play the vagrant in a 
country where you cannot sleep under the 
stars, but must have a rooftree above you and 
a fire to keep you from perishing. It is in 
cold countries that men's energies are knit up 
to the point of accomplishment, and their 
physique tempered and hardened to endur- 
ance. Cold that congeals the ground and the 
running streams, consolidates men, too, and 
favours that concerted action which is the 

259 



STfie :ffvitt(tfnfti» of ^tt 

beginning of civic liberty and free institu- 
tions. In a land of rigorous climate men are 
accustomed to struggle. Their life from day 
to day is an unremitting warfare with the 
elements, and breeds in them fortitude, en- 
durance, resourcefulness, and a light-hearted 
eagerness to cope with difficulty. The north 
wind, whipping about their ears, stings the 
blood to the cheek, stirring courage from 
the bottom of the heart at the same time; and 
those happiest zones, where nature is neither 
so bountiful as to encourage idleness, nor so 
bitter as to discourage and stultify growth, 
give us our best of humanity. 

In such a country men attain a certain poise 
of mind, not too sober nor yet too frivolous, 
and come to look upon the world with dis- 
cretion, with serenity, with temperate joy. 
Their intimate life is infused with a tincture 
of natural piety, unaffected and wholesome. 
And whatever revealed religion (as it is 
called) is imported to their shores must be 
coloured and modified by the original tem- 

260 



perament of the race. So that old traditions 
and customs and superstitions and habits of 
thought are found surviving amid the pure 
doctrines of newer belief, as blackened stumps 
survive a forest fire to be found long after- 
ward, when the young green is tall and lux- 
uriant all about them. 

In every Christian land there are customs 
and tales and scraps of folk-lore, held in pop- 
ular regard, which are not quite believed, 
perhaps, but which are kept alive in memory 
none the less. They are surviving remnants 
of creeds which once had a religious value 
and now retain no more than a sentiment of 
their former sanction. They may once have 
been obligatory as a duty, a votive commem- 
oration, an expiatory offering; but their ear- 
lier use is forgotten and we cannot tell why 
we observe them any more, -so tenacious 
are we of forms and ceremonies, so oblivious 
of spiritual origins. We hang up our childish 
stockings for the good little saint to fill with 
gifts and gewgaws, or we stick a spray of 

261 



E^t ffvitnXiu^ip oC art 

mistletoe in the chandelier — a dare to bash- 
ful youth — and never guess how came these 
customs nor what they may once have signi- 
fied. So there linger about all the festivals 
of the Church — Christmas, St John's Eve 
in midsummer, of Hallowe'en — legends and 
simple rites, which are lightly held memorials 
of some older faith, once, perhaps, significant 
and stupendous. For religion is not only 
from above but from below (if we may per- 
mit ourselves to use that manner of speech), 
not only the living Word sent down to us 
from the clear skies, as we are apt to fancy, 
but the whisper breathed from the ground 
as well. Whether natural or revealed, the 
source of our religious aspirations is the same. 
The eternal spirit utters itself obscurely in 
the dark hearts of heathen kings, or speaks in 
articulate clear words through the radiant 
minds of chosen seers and glowing young 
prophets, with equal authority. The same 
spirit of truthfulness, desiring only that beau- 
tiful goodness should be accomplished on the 

262 



earth, whispered in the ear of Buddha, dwelt 
with the aged John in Patmos, was a law of 
righteousness to the King Poet of Israel, spoke 
in accents threatening as thunder at the shrine 
of Delphi, and makes itself heard at a hun- 
dred unknown altars in the far corners of 
the earth to-day. For there are not a thousand 
such, but only One, though the inventive mind 
of man has imagined a thousand forms in 
which He has been supposed to reside. His 
true residence, all the while, has been neither 
at Paphos nor Cumae nor upon Sinai, but 
in the human heart, — in the house of the 
soul. 

A Christmas meditation for many of us 
must partake of the character of a philosophic 
or poetic reverie, rather than of religious ex- 
altation. The touch of the supernatural has 
disappeared; but that does not mean that the 
feeling of wonder has vanished ; it only means 
that the sentiment of worship is more natural 
than ever. If we cannot feel the awe and 
terror of a personal Supervisor of the uni- 

263 



verse, as in our childhood, we can feel much 
more certainly and definitely the presence of 
an unmeasured Power within ourselves, more 
real and beneficent than the Deity of our in- 
fant fancy. 

It was said that in a certain house there 
are many mansions; and I cannot help be- 
lieving that hospitable edifice is designed to 
shelter the unbeliever as well as the believer. 
Indeed, I cannot imagine such a creature as 
an unbeliever, though many there be (and 
excellent souls, too) who subscribe to none 
of the tenets of established creeds. I must 
leave to others the expounding of Christian 
doctrine as upheld by this church or that with 
so much vigour and confidence, and content 
myself with the modest irresponsible task of 
looking upon the teaching of the Man of 
Nazareth, his life and work, with the inno- 
cent eye of a bystander. Had I all the learn- 
ing of the ancients and moderns, I fear I 
should never have the temerity to be a 
preacher, — to offer to others as sure and in- 

264 



dubitable fact what is in its essence so chang- 
ing and volatile and dependent upon personal 
sentiment. For my part, I would rather have 
the simplest moral reflection from an old 
woodsman or a young scholar, whose life was 
clean and whose mind was free, than all the 
gravest homilies of bishops, hedged by tradi- 
tion and restricted by instituted authority. 
Is the breath of God less free than the sweet 
wind of heaven? or is it less likely to form 
itself into an unmistakable message to you or 
me than it was to call, to the saints of old? 
The great ones of all time, whose august 
names inspire us still, whose philosophy forms 
the basis of our common wisdom about life, 
were born to no greater possibility of inspira- 
tion than those children dancing in the street 
below. Whatever our fund of inspired reve- 
lation, we are awaiting other revelations 
fresher still. The story of the world is not 
finished. There are other years to come, other 
centuries, other peoples, and civilizations un- 
imagined. Will they, think you, lack their 

265 



poets and philosophers and prophets? The 
last word of inspiration has not been uttered, 
nor will it be, until the last man's lips are 
still. 

It was the habit of our Puritan progenitors 
to discountenance the merrymaking of old 
England, and only to lay stress on the purely 
spiritual side of life. Old customs savoured 
to them of ungodliness, and they must have 
only the soberest truth at all times. Our more 
liberal tenor of mind allows us to revert to 
many of the old usages which were discarded 
by those stern New Englanders, and we in- 
cline to make merry with as hearty a good- 
will as our forefathers used before Puritan- 
ism was heard of. Without at all discrediting 
the austere creed, we may be glad that its 
extreme rigour has been mitigated with much 
of the old spirit of joviality. For joy and 
light-hearted mirth are not heathenish, but 
truly of the essence of the religion of love, 
which we profess. It is only logical, too, 
that the generous promptings of the heart 

266 



should find vent and freedom and play, that 
kindly thoughts should express themselves in 
kind deeds. Moreover, the good deed induces 
better thoughts, and through the custom of 
charity we are insensibly led to charitable 
tenderness of heart. 

We may be glad, then, of the outward and 
visible signs of Christmas, and never fear 
they will impair its inward and spiritual 
grace. I like to have in mind all the old 
pagan piety attaching to this Festival of The 
Shortest Day,3as well as, the better and braver 
sentiments which Christianity gave to it. 
Surely there is no need to cast aside any pleas- 
ant and innocent scrap of ancient faith as 
vicious, simply because we need it no more. 
Superstition is only faith out of date; and is 
only bad because it is antiquated, and because, 
if we hold it, it interferes with knowledge. 
A little harmless superstition (so long as we 
do not actually believe in it) often lends 
charm to our faith, as a smile may soften a 
strong face; and many quaint observances 

267 



^iit :^vltn\3i^^ip ot art 

may be kept alive to add grace to our too 
monotonous life. When it comes to the veri- 
table spirit of the Christmas season, what are 
we to say? We may leave all the theological 
pronunciamentos, which the churches have 
repeated so often, to be repeated once again 
from desk and pulpit, and yet have our own 
thoughts on Christmas quite beyond the pale 
of authority. No amount of fine logic nor 
thunderous oratory can shake my quiet soul 
from its own convictions. Very likely you 
and I, my friend, shall have to^^nd ourselves 
in the position of onlookers in the church on 
Christmas Day, if indeed we cross the thresh- 
old. But for all that, we need not count our- 
selves unbelievers. It behooves us to stand 
for our right to be numbered among the faith- 
ful, though we subscribe to no single tenet 
of orthodoxy. Truth and goodness are not 
natural monopolies, but are free as light and 
air. They form the wholesome atmosphere 
of an intellectual and moral being. Shall I 
pay toll for a breath of the sweet wind of 

268 



heaven, or enjoy the sunlight only at another 
man's pleasure? No more will I receive 
without question any man's idea of the truth 
or beauty or goodness, though I will hear all 
gladly. The truth that comes to me over the 
pulpit rail must be perverted indeed, if it 
cannot stand this test, if it dare not take its 
chances with my reason. This is the attitude 
of our modern world toward religion. The 
mistake we make is in thinking it a dangerous 
attitude. Surely the soul of man is the only 
tabernacle of the veritable God. The sense 
of living humanity as to what is true, what 
is good, what is beautiful to see, is the only 
sanction for belief. You and I, standing out- 
side the reach of an obsolete authority, believe 
and cherish the words of the Sermon on the 
Mount not because Christ uttered them, but 
because in our inmost being we cannot help 
assenting to their lofty truth. It is a mark 
of truth that it must win our belief in the 
long run; it is a mark of goodness that it 
must command our love ; just as it is a mark 

269 



2Cifte :ffvltntf^fiip of Hrt 

of beauty that it must arouse our admiration. 
So that the sublime teachings of Christianity 
are quite secure, without all the artificial sanc- 
tions with which men have invested them. 
They only need to be separated from super- 
stition, to appeal to us with all their charm 
and power. Think what a stir any one of the 
four Gospels would make if it could be pub- 
lished to-morrow for the first time. Would 
we not at once receive it with eagerness, and 
set it among our treasured books? ^' More 
sublime than Emerson," we would say — 
" More subtle than Maeterlinck." And I 
believe it is only when we approach the words 
of Christ with just such an open mind and 
expectant spirit that we perceive their beauty 
and truth to the fullest. 

But see, how in all this overcareful con- 
sidering of the matter we miss the very germ 
of the gospel, which is the spirit of love. 
We worry ourselves over forms and patterns 
of conduct; we strain our logic to find out 
the truth; our sensitive and scrupulous mind 

270 



will be satisfied with nothing less than exact 
science; we give our days and nights to lay 
up knowledge; we shed rivers of blood for 
this creed or that dogma; and all the while 
the greater truth, the spiritual kernel of life, 
lies by the roadside waiting to be picked up. 
You think love an easy matter, and the Golden 
Rule the simplest of moral laws? Reflect that 
men, with all their good intentions, have 
never been able to make love the lodestar of 
the world for a single day of its history. It is 
the distinction of Christ's teaching that he 
offered us a rule of conduct which still re- 
mains approachable but unrealized, drawing 
our fullest assent to its impracticable sublim- 
ity. And why impractical? Only because of 
our lack of courage. No man dares square 
his action according to his most generous im- 
pulse, for fear his neighbour will get the bet- 
ter of him. So that our whole system of civil- 
ization is infected with this sordid poltroon- 
ery, and we continue in a state of distrust and 
social strife, divorcing our faith from our life. 

271 



8Ctie :ffvitnnniti» of ^xt 

Knowing in our hearts the goodliness of love, 
the efficacy of kindness, we still carry on the 
concerns of life with a cowardly disregard to 
our ideals and aspirations. 

The more welcome, then, is this greatest 
of all festivals, when we commemorate the 
birth of the Master whose life still stands as 
the most eminent reproof to our timidity and 
self-seeking. Once a year, at least, we are put 
in mind of the Better Way, the way of the 
glad heart, the open hand, the unsuspicious 
mind. You say that no business could be 
successfully conducted on Christian princi- 
ples, under modern conditions? Then let us 
do without business. You say that cities could 
not thrive, nor nations grow, nor individuals 
prosper in an age of strenuous competition, if 
they attempted to abide by the law of love? 
Then let us do without prosperity. 

The fact remains that all our contrivances 
for outward reformation of institutions are 
but futile tinkering with the body of society, 



272 



when it is the soul of man that needs attention. 
A little more honesty, a little more love, a lit- 
tle more courage, a little more kindliness and 
gentleness and helpful generosity in the heart 
of average men and women, — these are more 
important than the passage of a thousand laws 
or the instituting of any new schemes of so- 
cial betterment. Love is an old, old remedy 
for the unhappy plight of the world. The 
curious thing is that, while we all profess to 
believe in its efficacy, we cannot summon up 
enough resolution to put it to the test. It has 
never been thoroughly tried yet; for most of 
our attempts, though some of them have been 
brave enough, have been but half-hearted. 

Suppose we try to carry a little of the 
Christmas elation over into the New Year. 
Suppose we try to make the new year a 
little less heathenish, a little less full of cru- 
elty and noise and terror and greed, a little 
less absurdly at variance with all our profes- 
sions of religion than most of these nineteen 



273 



hundred years have been! The Golden Age 
is never far away, but is only waiting until 
we adopt the Golden Law, to return with 
gladness among men. 



274 



Saint Valentine 



It is cold in the North in February. On 
the other side of the forty-ninth parallel the 
snow comes from a gray and silent heaven 
about the latter part of November, and after 
that we do not see the earth again until April. 
There are days of brilliant sun, and nights 
of marvellous moonlight, of dazzling white 
and muffled evergreen, but, although the grip 
of frost may be relaxed for a few days, his 
hold upon the land is not altogether loosened 
until the migrating birds come back and the 
year is past the equinox. In all these five 
months of snow you will never once set foot 
on the bare ground. 

And yet these winter days are not all alike. 
The progress of the gray season has been 

275 



gradual; the oncoming season of leaves is 
gradual, too. It is a period of ebb in the 
tide of time, but there is a certain point, a 
certain date, in that period, when the outgoing 
currents of warmth and light and summer 
cease to diminish, and begin slowly to return. 
All through December and January the som- 
bre world seems to have forgotten the wonder 
of June and the bravery of October, and to 
have settled sullenly down to endurance. 
Then on a certain day the ebbing tide seems 
to halt and turn. The aspect of earth and sky 
is different, brighter, larger, bluer. And we 
say in our hearts, " There is hope once more, 
and by and by it will be spring!" This 
day, I have noticed, this birthday of the nat- 
ural year, falls about the eighth or tenth of 
February. 

An old custom has pitched upon the feast 
of St. Valentine as the festival of first love, 
and made him, willing or unwilling, the pa- 
tron saint of youthful ardours. Popular sup- 
position, which knows little of the true ori- 

276 



Saint Talentdie 

gins of our immemorial habits and traditional 
observances, says that Valentine's day was 
chosen because it happened to fall about the 
time of the mating of birds, and was there- 
fore an appropriate date for celebrating the 
first choice of the human lover, — the awak- 
ening of innocence at the touch of desire. 
The truth is, we know very little of these 
racial usages which have been passed on to 
us from remote antiquity; we can only guess 
that they must have had their beginnings as 
sacred rites, commemorating this or that es- 
sential need or joy of the mysterious heart of 
man. In no other way could they have at- 
tained so unbreakable a hold upon us, surviv- 
ing as living traditions even in our own 
incredulous age. They are often not sanc- 
tioned by the simpler and more austerely 
spiritual religion which Christianity incul- 
cates, and have nothing to do with its gracious 
ministrations. They are merely survivals 
from old pagan forms of worship, beautiful 
and significant, but long since fallen into 

277 



SCtie Jfvitnnu'^lp of art 

desuetude, and ineffectual for our modern 
wants. They have no actual sway over the 
mind, and yet we allow them to live on among 
our children with an easy tolerance, as if the 
race remembered its own childhood and 
smiled at the memory. 

Of the good Valentine, whose patronage 
we make so light of in our pleasantries, not 
much is known, and nothing at all that would 
justify his choice as the especial guardian of 
adolescence and successor of Cupid. The 
sainted man was a priest and bishop of Rome 
during the Claudian persecutions in the third 
century. In those strenuous times they made 
short work of any who demurred at author- 
ity or ventured down the alluring alleys of 
novelty in religion. Valentine, like so many 
others of a nameless and unnumbered multi- 
tude, was thrown into prison for the faith that 
possessed him ; and like them he gave up the 
breath of life most cheerfully in exchange for 
his stubborn predilections, yielding his body 
to be martyred with clubs. The only other 

278 



S^fnt T^Untint 

tradition of him declares that, while in jail, 
he cured his keeper's daughter of blindness. 
In this scanty record of a devoted follower 
of the new faith there is no hint of worldli- 
ness or loverlike infatuation. Easily as one 
might build a romance about the incident of 
his jailor's daughter, there would be no 
foundation for the story. To make of her 
another Heloise, and of him a second (or 
rather a first) Abelard, might be a pretty 
pastime for an idle fancy, but it would be a 
fabrication without the tissue of truth. We 
must look elsewhere for a reason for St. 
Valentine's election to the patronage of love, 
and we shall find it in the most unexpected 
place. There is no glamour about it, so far 
as Valentine is concerned, poor fellow. I 
almost feel sorry that he must be robbed of 
any umbrage of romance, and I can imagine 
that he himself in the realms of innocence 
may have learned to look with tolerant regard 
on his own unearned repute, now so many 
centuries old, as the saint of lovers. 

279 



©He Jpvitn^u^ip of att 

To be the protector of sweethearts must 
surely add a sweetness to life even in the heav- 
enly dominions of bliss, and when one has 
long since been divorced from all enchanting 
earthly inclinations. Whether there be any 
traces of our mortal desires, so pure in their 
origin, so blameless in their passionate aspira- 
tion, still lingering about our beings in that 
future state, I do not know. But unless all 
human companionships are done away, all 
resemblance to our human happinesss super- 
seded by some unguessed and unimaginable 
kind of beatitude, there must surely lurk in 
the heart of Valentine, bishop and martyr, 
sentiments of generosity, of pity, of kindliness, 
for all the hopes and agonies of mortal lovers. 
All the pretty observances done in his name 
must come to his blessed cognizance much as 
premonitions and feelings (as we call them) 
come to ourselves, here in the meshes of our 
gross incarnation, only more potently and 
vividly than here. If it moves our human 
hearts to think upon the joys and trials of 

280 



Saint Tultntint 

lovers in their first infatuation, how much 
more must it move the sympathy of one who 
is now all sympathy, — the solicitude of one 
whose kindly impulses are no longer par- 
celled and distracted and obscured by the 
clamourings of a bodily existence! If prayers 
be efficacious and the departed are permitted 
to be at all aware of the progress of earthly 
affairs, then I doubt not the good Valentine 
has cheerfully accepted the duty laid upon 
him by our implicit trust. So unflinching a 
martyr to the ideal could never find it in his 
heart to disregard our confidence in his 
power. He would feel, I am sure, almost as 
truly bound to respond to the caprice of for- 
tune which has made him the vicar of love, 
as he did to assent to the destiny which made 
him vicar of Rome. I would as soon think 
of distrusting him as I would St. Anthony 
of Padua, who guards our journeys and re- 
covers what is lost. But how came Valentine 
into his unsought spiritual dominion? 

In early times, before the coming of the 
281 



Christians, the Romans were accustomed to 
hold their midwinter Lupercalia, or celebra- 
tion, in honour of Pan. Among other cere- 
monies observed at this festival was a certain 
rite wherein the names of young women were 
drawn by lot by the young men. To the 
overseers of the early Christian Church fell 
the task of attempting to eradicate the tena- 
cious doctrines and customs of heathendom. 
Often they were wise enough to resort to grad- 
ual methods of reform, and in the case of the 
Lupercalia they managed to substitute the 
names of saints for those of women. Each 
participant in the lottery would thus find him- 
self under the protection of a certain saint, 
as his lot happened to be drawn. The older 
usage, however, was the more interesting, and 
we cannot believe that the saints held prece- 
dence over the ladies for very long. Old cus- 
toms are not easily discredited, and human 
nature is not to be etherealized offhand by 
any theology. Many centuries later the old 
superstition was still alive, surviving from 

282 



S^int Taltntint 

the ceremonies of the Lupercalia, and St. 
Francis de Sales tried to inhibit the use of 
valentines. 

Still the benighted custom would not be 
downed, and English literature for centuries 
is full of rhymes and verses for St. Valen- 
tine's Day. Drayton, the Elizabethan, for 
example, writes: 

" Muse, bid the morn awake, 
Sad winter now declines, 
Each bird doth choose a mate, 
The day's Saint Valentine's. 

" For that good bishop's sake 
Get up, and let us see 
What beauty it shall be 
That fortune us assigns." 

As if chance had not already too large a 
share in our precarious destiny, we must in- 
voke its gratuitous interference! Would you 
not suppose that men would be too discour- 
aged at the grand lottery of life to invent any 
game still more haphazardous or entrust their 

283 



destinies to the turn of a ballot? Surely it is 
perilous enough to make choice in love when 
caution and judgment are enlisted in the 
cause! Must we imperil our happiness and 
stake our future on a chance meeting of a 
certain frosty morning in February? " Nay," 
says the wisdom of the ages, " ye are already 
in the hands of fate. Your most carefully 
considered choice is already enmeshed by un- 
seen conditions, and your freedom only runs 
the length of the leash of destiny." So it is. 
We grow infatuated with danger and court 
peril with a cheerful daring, as venturesome 
boys grow familiar with firecrackers on the 
Fourth of July, or skim over the thin ice with 
a breathless speed, flouting courage in the face 
of catastrophe. 

What the exact rites of the Lupercalia were 
is a matter of guesswork for the most part, 
and Pan, they say, is dead. The power of 
Valentine, too, is passing away with other old 
customs and credences. The new faith oblit- 
erated the old feasts from the calendar by 

284 



Saint TuUntint 

overwriting them with novel names. Our en- 
lightenment and rationalism are like to erase 
them altogether. Neither Pan nor Valentine 
can survive the spread of the scientific spirit; 
but, having returned all things to reason, may 
we not find the world a very gray, monot- 
onous place of few joys and fewer hopes? 
Life is not wholly reasonable, after all, and 
it must surely be the greatest folly to fancy 
we can make it so. It is to be enjoyed as well 
as to be studied and understood, — to be taken 
with a thankful heart and not always probed 
for a meaning. Therefore, if there is an un- 
regenerate strain in you that insists on still 
believing in old Lupercus of the wild woods, 
may you have the reward of your belief! 
And if you are pleased to render observance 
to times and seasons, and count St. Valen- 
tine a personage, who shall prove you mis- 
taken? 

We ourselves are less ceremonious, less 
given to manners and trivial elegances, even 
less polite than our sires. The forfeits and 

285 



©He :ffvltn7iniitp of att 

gifts which Valentine's day used to impose 
are no longer in vogue; yet we cannot quite 
escape the sentiment of the feast. As in so 
many instances, we may impart new interpre- 
tations to old forms. Is not life itself as we 
have to live it merely the art of expressing 
ourselves in fresh ways in the old customs 
already at hand? All our daily avocations 
may be as trite as the alphabet itself; it is 
always possible to rearrange them in new and 
alluring and articulate combinations. 

The day of St. Valentine may well stand, 
even for us common, sensible folk, for the 
festival of friends and lovers. On this morn- 
ing when first the reviving sun comes back 
to gray streets and snowy fields, we may well 
encourage tender thoughts, — resolve and 
hope and aspire. The touch of the warm sun- 
light on our shoulder may well seem like a 
hint to bestir ourselves about the greatest 
business of the universe, the old, engrossing, 
imperishable, never-ended affair of love. It 
will remind us of the perennial goodness of 

286 



&^int TaUnttnt 

living, the unaging wholesomeness of earth, 
the fond yet delightful infatuations of the 
world, and all the entrancing possibilities 
which lie hidden in the path of adventure. 
Tainted with the madness of the lover, we 
may even embrace that supremest of human 
follies, the delusion that heights of excellence, 
of unselfishness, of kindness, and devotion 
have never yet been exemplified as we shall 
practise them. Is not that a generous aspira- 
tion worth experiencing, even though we 
should not realize a tenth of it? Will you not 
join the light but not- frivolous band of St. 
Valentine's followers, bethink you of your 
youth to-day with all its radiant expectations, 
and resolve to make some one more happy 
by your love? It may be a sweetheart or a 
child or an old lady; love is good for every- 
body; and it is good for us to love, for in 
loving we are only giving free play to the 
soul in its natural occupation. Make your 
vows on St. Valentine's morn, gentlemen 
and friends! I promise you great joy from 

287 



^lit jffvittOfHliip Of art 

their fulfilment. You may not be able to 
keep them with all the nobility of intention 
in which they are made, but in the effort there 
will be exaltation and sober gain. For one 
day more the youthful poet within you may 
walk the earth in gay supremacy, to better 
this life for the beloved with a gift of verses 
or violets and renewals of gentle friendship. 
See to it that some fresh joy takes up its lodg- 
ing in the heart of the little friend, and sor- 
row and weariness and disappointment be 
turned from her door. Take care that laugh- 
ter comes back to her lips and the flush of 
delight to her cheeks, for perhaps you have 
been a neglectful Valentine, and your vows 
sadly need to be renewed. Be not ashamed, 
therefore, of the fanatical enthusiasms of love, 
and make your penance for sins of negligence, 
of thoughtlessness, of unkindness, preparatory 
to the golden hours of spring. 

For on St. Valentine's morning, if you 
will take my word for it, our venerable 
Mother Nature goes to her closet and takes 

288 



&uint Talenttne 

down her green cloak, which before many 
weeks she will resume for the festivals of 
April. Had we not better look over our own 
wardrobe of the heart, also? The dust of 
familiarity and the moth of doubt play sad 
havoc with the soul's garment of love. And 
when the appointed day arrives, and the feast 
of Spring-time is instituted once more, — 
when the sap comes back to the hills, and 
the madness of love to the heart of man, — 
we must not be found unprepared. Every 
heart must have in readiness its scarlet tunic 
and its golden coat, for how more appropri- 
ately can it be clothed than with love and 
joy? 



289 






Perhaps one of the maddest things in a 
mad world is to inquire the cause of madness, 
just as it seems to be one of the requisites of 
happiness that we should not set our heart 
upon it. The Angel of Life is evasive, reti- 
cent, not to be cornered, yet abounding in 
generous revelations of the truth upon occa- 
sion; and that mortal is likely to learn most 
about the mysteries of being who does not 
pry into them too industriously. Curiosity is 
the fundamental passion of the mind, and to 
satisfy curiosity with knowledge is one of the 
three great sources of happiness. At the same 
time it is forbidden to know everything. At 
least this is so for the time being, whatever 

290 



sue JWairtii l^atrs JWalrnei^s 

may be permitted to human investigation in 
some future age. 

And so, whether it is hatters or March 
hares, we know very little about the madness 
of either. Each has become a byword in pro- 
verbial speech, and we make a simile of his 
erratic fortune without a second thought. 
How sad to be a name and nothing more in 
the mouth of one's fellows! Yet I have no 
doubt the hatter is as indifferent to his repute 
as the hare, even perhaps a little proud of 
his peculiarity. So frail is moral nature, it 
is boastful even of its blemishes when they 
lend it a little distinction and draw the eye 
of the crowd. One can very well fancy the 
complacency of. the hatter under his visita- 
tion, how he would turn it to good account 
and make a profitable investment of his afflic- 
tion. He would be a sorry tradesman who 
could not manage to secure some slight advan- 
tage in dealing with destiny and come out at 
last on the right side of his reckoning with 
Providence. Was ever the madness of a hat- 

291 



ter so complete his commercial instinct could 
not prevail against it? Is there not always 
a residuum of sanity at the bottom of his 
mania, a trace of shrewd calculation con- 
cealed under the guise of his feckless inno- 
cence? The madness of the hatter is the 
wisdom of the serpent, seemingly guileless 
yet profoundly subtle and sardonic. 

Now the March hare is in a very different 
case. His folly is the folly of a child, his 
madness the madness of ecstasy, of elation, of 
transport. He is a visionary and partakes of 
the rapture of lovers and prophets and bards. 
He is possessed and carried out of himself. 
He is akin to the oracular priestess of Delphi 
and the Vestals, whose care it was to cherish 
the sacred flame of their goddess. He may 
be the least of all the creatures who suffer 
this form of madness, but his tenure of the 
divine possession is none the less authentic. 
The burden of joy laid upon his spirit is ex- 
cessive, and an unhinging of his balance has 
supervened. He is mad because he loves too 

292 



greatly, whereas the hatter is mad because he 
knows too much. Saul and Hamlet were mad 
as hatters, through an excess of knowledge 
vouchsafed to them. Blake and Shelley and 
many another mystic were mad as March 
hares, by reason of the too great stress of in- 
spiration laid upon them. In the one case 
the dementia is a malady of the mind, in the 
other it is an affection of the spirit; though, 
tried by the standard of sober sense, they are 
all mad together. 

With something of the March hare's own 
folly, I spent a day in a library trying to find 
out the meaning of his madness, its cause and 
scope, or how it came into our proverbial 
lore. Of course, the search was futile, and 
I only found out several things I was not look- 
ing for. One quotation, however, seemed 
pleasant enough to remember. Drayton in 
his " Nymphidia " says that Oberon 

" Grew mad as any hare, 
When he had sought each place with care, 
And found the queen was missing." 

293 



^fft ffvitvcan^ip of att 

I daresay that is the gist of the matter, for 
the best of the cyclopaedists took refuge in the 
bare statement that hares are particularly wild 
during the mating season in March. So the 
madness of our little brother with the long 
ears is only the erratic behaviour of a lover, 
after all, and we must sympathize with him 
in his happy derangement. Who will say 
there is any joy in the world comparable to 
that irresponsible state of election, when the 
kind gods have marked us for their own, and 
bestowed on us the favour of their rapturous 
life for one spring day? Is it any wonder 
the hare should be full of quirks and starts, 
of aimless chasing to and fro, of dashing here 
and halting there without rhyme or reason? 
Could one expect so frail and sensitive a being 
to support so great a burden of ecstasy and 
still be undistracted, poised, and sane? Is 
it not rather a marvel he has a spark of rea- 
son left? Most men and women have been 
lovers, too, in their day, and unless memory 
can be wholly blighted by time, should know 

294 



sue JWatrJi m^vt'u M^^tituu 

how to feel for their little friend in his March 
wildness : 

" For that is the madness of Ishtar, 
Which comes upon earth in spring." 

It is easy to identify Easter, the ancient 
goddess of the spring wind and the southwest 
rain, with Ishtar or Astarte, the deity of love 
who was worshipped with dark rites in Asia, 
passed into the purer religion of Hellas as 
Aphrodite, and survives as April, the mother 
of the new-ploughed field and swelling seed. 
The soft wind from the south is her immortal 
breath; her garment is the mist of purple 
rain; the opening windflower and blood-root 
and hepatica betray where her foot has 
passed ; she touches the wild cherry with her 
hand as she journeys, and the woodlands are 
filled w^ith the fragrance of its breaking 
bloom. In the bitter North, when the rivers 
are loosened from their long imprisonment 
and go sparkling to the sea, when the streams 
of melting snow babble to the stars in 

" The hopeful, solemn, many-murmured night," 
295 



2Ciie iFtienlrfiii^(ii of ^vt 

that, too, is the work of the great spring god- 
dess, while in the hearts of all mortal crea- 
tures she works a no less miraculous resur- 
gence. It is she who brings back the purple 
swallow at the appointed day, and whispers 
the time of year to the flame-bright crocus un- 
der the mold. It is she also who puts mad 
fancies into the heads of imperial lovers and 
wild March hares. For before her not 
only is no distinction of persons, but the 
" flower in the crannied wall," the hunter on 
the trail, the small green frog in the marsh, 
and the proud prince in his palace are equal 
in her eyes. It is she also who presides over 
the unmitigated ardours of earth, and delights 
in the splendid longings, the impassioned de- 
sires, the impossible romantic aspirations of 
human hearts. It was her madness which 
came upon Leander and sent him to swim the 
Hellespont to his death, for the sake of a girl's 
kiss. 

For no weightier reason, how many a man 
has gone to his doom in the glad, fragrant 

296 



hours of some lengthened twilight of spring, 
with the green pipes of the frogs sounding in 
the meadows, and the still, small magic flute 
of desire answering in his breasti Over the 
hills or beyond the sea dwelt the remembered 
shape of beauty, beckoned the vision of allur- 
ing loveliness, echoed the silver sound of irre- 
sistible laughter, and he could do nothing but 
follow the old irremediable path of destiny 
and joy. Let prudence lay up saws and ex- 
perience inculcate caution as they will; it is 
not in the nature of love to count the cost. 
Youth knows a better wisdom in the infatu- 
ated gladness of the lover, and those whom the 
gods love die without ever being disillusioned. 
Crazy in the sight of the world, they go to 
their graves with no care upon their brow, 
unreluctant to the last. Of a metal too fine to 
be tarnished by the corrosive air of life, they 
pass in charmed immunity through the scurvy 
environments of struggle and selfishness and 
greed, childlike, instinctive, single-hearted, 
guided for ever by the divine insanity. 

297 



2^8^ ffvitnTfuiiip of ^rt 

It is not only in the tender pursuits of 
youth that the inescapable March madness 
reveals itself. It is made patent in all the un- 
dertakings of men. Wherever there is a touch 
of the visionary and the extreme there are 
its symptoms appearing. We may be sober, 
diligent, God-fearing, impeccable, stanch as 
churchwardens, and dependable as a stone 
wall, yet make no more than a decent demise 
after all. For all our sedulous anxiety to keep 
the Commandments, we may go down to the 
pit with none to grieve above us. The local 
paper may give us a stickful of perfunctory 
eulogy, our possessions will be scattered 
among our relatives, and the sum total of the 
matter is not much more than a name and two 
dates on a headstone under a sighing willow. 
Of such is the kingdom of the world. It is 
all very well and very right and very neces- 
sary, but alone it is not enough. You will 
find that whenever a man is remembered and 
beloved beyond the day of his great departure, 
there has been a touch of the unusual and ex- 

298 



travagant about him in some direction. How- 
ever commonplace he may have seemed for 
the most part, it v^ill turn out that those v^ho 
knev^ him best were acquainted with exag- 
gerated and unusual traits in his character, 
vagaries, and predilections out of the ordi- 
nary, generous promptings of self-forgetful 
folly, which endeared him to them more than 
all his unwavering rectitude. For it is not 
what we expect of people that makes us love 
them, but their unasked, unrequited, and lav- 
ish actions. The soul is not happy in exacti- 
tude, but loves the overbrimming measure. 
The mean and calculating wisdom of the 
market-place is abhorrent to it, and the waste- 
ful, splendid, unstinted dealings of Nature 
are the only method it knows. Who ever 
heard of keeping a tally in friendship, or 
doing a kindness for the sake of gain? Surely 
that were the very embodiment of blasphemy 
against the spirit of love! Yet that is the 
custom of traders and politicians and money- 
lenders and all the sleek complacency that 

299 



rules the world. Alas for them! They de- 
spise the unsuspecting gentleness of Utopian 
dreamers, they have cast out all childish and 
impractical faith from their mind, and have 
made themselves lords of their fellow men, 
only to lose the greatest of all treasures at last, 
— a radiant spirit and a contented heart. 

We aver glibly enough that aberration al- 
ways goes with genius, but we make a mistake 
when we expect genius to exist without aber- 
ration. Nature progresses steadily but un- 
evenly, here a little and there a little, now at 
one point, now at another. It is the very 
height of her intention to produce a perfect 
individual, to embody the beauty of the nor- 
mal in the single instance. Toward this ideal 
she is always tending, yet how seldom she 
seems to attain it, even remotely! The impos- 
sible hopes and aims of the altruist make him 
peculiar, — make him a variant from the 
average type of man. Any great capacity in 
one direction or another, which we call genius 
and hold to be a kind of inspiration, makes 

300 



its possessor conspicuous. It does not make 
him abnormal, for that is the one direction in 
which he is permitted to approach the normal 
a little more closely. If he were allowed to 
approach it in all directions, — if he could 
have strength of body and power of mind, 
for instance, commensurate with his noble 
longings and imaginings, — the creature of 
genius would be human no longer, but divine. 
And it is not permitted any one mortal to 
run so far ahead in the great procession. 

It does not need any philosophy, however, 
to appreciate the March hare's enthusiasm. 
We all know how the feeling of young spring 
takes hold of him, when the sappy buds begin 
to swell and the sleeping rivers begin to mur- 
mur in their icy dungeons. We, tog, have 
our seizures of restlessness, our longings to 
wander, our admonitions of splendid discon- 
tent, when the sun passes the equator and the 
hours of sunshine lengthen toward the season 
of flowers. For us also routine becomes irk- 
some and common sense the only delusion. 

301 



cue ;ffvittOfn'^i» of att 

It is the time for rejuvenation upon the earth, 
when age looks on youth with an envious eye, 
and the soberest beef-eater among us is wont 
to put by his accustomed habit of prudence 
for the gayer garb of some more reckless vir- 
tue. It is not enough to be sound citizens, 
forsooth, and scrupulous upholders of things 
as they are; we must revert to the days of 
our pupilage and taste once more the intox- 
icating savour of romance. Perhaps we have 
accumulated an enviable store of worldly 
wisdom, venerable with the dust of time, and 
are hoarding it against ravages of age. Of 
no avail is our fatuous precaution. The first 
breath of spring wind blows it all away, and 
we go merrily forth upon the great adven- 
ture as empty-handed and daring as when we 
first began. It may be hard to learn instruc- 
tion from our elders; it is a hundred times 
harder to forget the counsels of our own 
youth. The heart's great by-laws of intre- 
pidity and hope need neither to be written 
nor taught; they were promulgated long be- 

302 



cue JHatrcH l^uvt'u M^^ntuu 

fore our puny civilizations were dreamed of, 
and they will guide many generations when 
our hands have let go of all temporal affairs. 
The forethought of the ant may be a suffi- 
cient providence against the perils of winter, 
but we must have a touch of the March mad- 
ness of the hare if we would come happily 
through the round year. It is not enough to 
avoid disaster and penury and mischance; 
the stones of the field accomplish that better 
than we. We needs must have " a bliss to 
die with, dim descried," if we would save 
ourselves from the consciousness of ultimate 
failure. You may very well think to get your- 
self through the inexorable portals of heaven 
under the patronage of Socrates and Newton 
and the Lord of Verulam, of the seven wise 
men of Greece and the seventy wise men of 
modern days. But, pray, were they not all 
mad together? Let me take my modest 
chance with the timorous March hare. 

THE END. 
303 



SFP 99. lOO" 



'«>PVDELTOCAT.OIV 
SEP. 22 1904 

StP. 2^ '^^^"^ 



